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WILL T. HALE. 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 



BEING 



A SERIES OF SHORT SKETCHES OF 

STATESMEN, MILITARY CAPTAINS, 

ORATORS, JURISTS, PREACHERS, 

MEN OF LITERATURE, ETC. 



ILLUSTRATED WITH HALF-TONE LIKENESSES. 



BY WILL T. HALE, 

AUT HOK OF "«-— - p oEMS,» »• 



VOLUME T. v 



1900. 



. Hi6 



THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

JUL, 27 1901 

E' BRIGHT ENTRY 
\ OuXXc. N» 

COPY B. J 

Copyright, 

Barbee & Smith, Agents. 

1900. 



INTRODUCTION. 

The most enlarging of all studies is the study of 
human history, and all history is at bottom only bi- 
ography. It Avas with this view that the editor of 
the Children's Visitor, in which the following sketches 
first apx^eared, arranged for their preparation. 

Mr. Will T. Hale, who has acquired a national rep- 
utation for both his prose and poetic writings, was 
chosen to do the work on account of his genius for 
historic treatment, combined with a broad and gen- 
erous spirit, which was a guaranty against any offen- 
sive sectionalism. How well he has done his work 
has already been attested by the unusual popularity 
o e the. sketches while appearing currently in the Vis- 
itor 3 and by a corresponding demand for their publica- 
tion in this permanent form. 

It was deemed wise to establish such a series as 
that which bears the title "Great Southerners" for 
the purpose of more accurately informing our chil- 
dren and young people touching those men who in 
various life works have reflected credit upon the 
land which gave them birth. There are several rea- 
sons which justify a special treatment of those great 
men who have belonged to our own section. Only 
two of the reasons need here be mentioned: 1. The 
Southern and Southwestern States of the Union 
constitute in an important sense a distinct common- 
wealth of thought and sentiment, and therefore de- 
mand a somewhat special treatment. 2. The sit- 
uation through the last thirty years of our history 

(Hi) 



IV INTRODUCTION. 

has been such that this section has been neglected in 
the general distribution of credits, and the balance 
needs to be restored in such a spirit as to broaden 
rather than to make narrow. It cannot but foster 
the truly national spirit in our young people' to have 
an orderly and just exhibit of the immortal part which 
their ancestors have taken in the origination and de- 
velopment of the greatest of the nations. It is also 
well to illustrate in the reading of the young the fact 
that statesmen alone, however great they may be, can- 
not make a great nation. The statesman can no more 
construct and conduct a great and enduring com- 
monwealth without the preacher than society can 
live without religion. Nor can these chief influences, 
when combined, suffice. The teacher, the literatus, 
the lawyer, the doctor, the tradesman, the farmer, the 
artisan, the seaman, the soldier, and others, are less 
prominent, but in their places no less important, ele- 
ments of a complete civilization. It will be found, 
therefore, that the biographical range of this volume is 
unusually broad, and, in a sense, incomplete. Another 
volume at least will be necessary to anything like a 
representative list of those men who have put the 
country under lasting obligations by the character of 
their work. 

This volume is sent forth with the hope that it may 
prove an inspiration to a lofty patriotism and to all 
nobility of character in those who read it. 

James Atkins, 

Sunday School Editor. 



CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

^-George Washington 1 

Patrick Henry 8 

Thomas Jefferson 14 

Henry Lee 19 

^James Monroe 24 

/ John Marshall 29 

•James Madison 35 

_^J6hn Sevier 40 

^Andrew Jackson 46 

Peter Cartwright 50 

John Pendleton Kennedy 57 

^JEdgar Allan Poe 61 

^Henry Clay 66 

jXohn C. Calhoun 71 

John Randolph . 75 

^Robert Y. Hayne 81 

^Thomas H. Benton 88 

^Sam Houston 94 

^William Henry Harrison 98 

John Tyler 104 

George F. Pierce 108 

—John Bell 115 

John B. McFerrin .119 

James K. Polk 125 

Roger B Taney 130 

Zachary Taylor 135 

David Crockett. 138 

^^Jefferson Davis 144 

Abraham Lincoln , 149 

(v) 



VI CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Robert E. Lee 156 

Thomas J. (Stonewall) Jackson 164 

Enoch M. Marvin 172 

William E. Munsey 178 

Alexander H. Stephens '. 184 

y Paul H. Hayne 189 

Henry Timrod 194 

Augusta Evans Wilson 198 

Andrew Johnson 201 

Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain) 207 

Albert Taylor Bledsoe. 213 

Henry Watterson 220 

„Oeorge W. Cable 227 

Holland N. McTyeire 230 

Sidney Lanier 236 

Mary K Murfree 240 

Joel Chandler Harris 245 

James Lane Allen .'..-...... 249 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS, 



GEORGE WASHINGTON, 




Mr. Paul Leicester 
Ford, one of the latest 
biographers of Washing- 
ton, avers that, while men 
have been accustomed to 
look on the Father of His 
Country as dignified and 
quite correct while a 
young man, he was, on the 
contrary, hot - tempered, 
unusually susceptible to 
the charms of the gentler sex, very particular 
indeed about the cut of his clothes, if not a 
dandy, and inclined to convivial habits. We 
are disposed to doubt the report as to his 
convivial habits when, we reflect that soon 
after he had reached the age of twenty- one, 
being present at the burial of Gen, Braddook, 
the chaplain of whose army was wounded, he 
was selected from all others to read the funeral 
service; and, furthermore, en writing to his 
mother after the battle on the bloody field of 

(1) 



Z GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

Monongahela, lie refers to "the powerful dis- 
pensations of Providence" in protecting him 
"beyond all human probability or expectation." 
These things mean much to one who can put 
two and two together. They lead us to believe 
that the young soldier must have been pure and 
reverential even in his thoughts. Mr. Ford may 
or may not be correct in his statement that Wash- 
ington was an outrageously bad speller. The 
latter may have written on an occasion after 
seeing a young lady who revived the recollection 
of his rejection by another, "Whereas was I to 
live more retired from young Women, I might 
in some manner eliviate my sorrows by burying 
that chast and troublesome Passion in the grave 
of oblivion or etarnall forgetfulness." But this 
cannot affect our veneration for one who, what- 
ever may have been his lack of education, has so 
impressed the world with his deeds that no na- 
tion has yet hesitated to grant that he was great 
in the truest sense of the word. Such discov- 
eries, though ever so true, cannot mar his glory 
any more than the fading of one rose can mar the 
charm of spring with its myriad of flowers. 

George Washington was born in Westmore- 
land County, Va., February 22, 1732. His first 
military services were given to England in the 
troubles between the mother country and France. 
He was at an early age appointed adjutant gen- 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. o 

eral, with the rank of major, to inspect and ex- 
ercise the militia in one of the districts into which 
Virginia was divided on account of French en- 
croachments and threatened Indian depredations. 
Later on he was assigned to one of the grand mil- 
itary divisions of the colony. He was appointed 
commissioner in 1753 to make a six-hundred- 
mile trip through the wilderness to find out from 
the commander of the French forces why he was 
invading the king's dominions. He made the 
journey successfully, though just finishing his 
twenty-first year; and on his return became, in 
the words of Irving, "the rising hope of Vir- 
ginia." After this he saw considerable service, 
always conducting himself gallantly and hero- 
ically. 

Although he had married on January 6, 1759, 
(his wife being Mrs. Martha Custis), and had 
resigned his commission as a colonial officer, he 
was not allowed to enjoy private life. He was 
chbsen a delegate to the Virginia House of Bur- 
gesses. His services in a military line had been 
estimated at their true value, and when he ar- 
rived to enter upon his new civil duties he was 
tendered the thanks of the House. So surprised 
was he at this manifestation that he could not re- 
spond. " Sit down, Mr. Washington," said the 
Speaker. ' c Your modesty equals your valor, and 
that surpasses the power of any language I pos- 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS 

intinued a member of 
Burgesses fourteen or fifteen years. 

As might be conjectured from his prominence 
and the patriotism he showed in the growing 
troubles between the colonies and Great Britain, 
which finally ended in the Revolutionary strug- 
gle, he was elected a delegate to the first Conti- 
nental Congress in 1774. He, Patrick Henry, 
and others repaired at once to Philadelphia, 
where Congress met. This was an important 
Congress, held as it was with closed doors, for 
the papers prepared there to be sent to the gov- 
ernment form a proud part of our history. Of 
these papers and that Congress Lord Chatham 
said in a speech: "In all my reading and obser- 
vation — and it has been a favorite study (I have 
read Thucidides and have studied and admired 
the master statists of the world) that for solidi- 
ty of reasoning, force of sagacity, and wisdom 
of conclusion under such a complication of diffi- 
cult circumstances no nation or body of men can 
stand in preference to the General Congress at 
Philadelphia.'' We can imagine the part taken 
by Washington at this session when we recall 
the assertion of Patrick Henry to the effect that 
for solid information and sound judgment Col. 
Washington was the greatest man on the floor. 

To the thoughtful mind there is much in the 
career of the Virginian up to this time to sug- 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

gest the guiding hand of God. There is more in 
it than the suggestion of the trend of events in' a 
Greek tragedy. He was learning the arts of war 
in the battles with the French, which were to be 
of service to him when called on later to lead 
the colonies to independence: he was gaining 
wisdom and experience during the long years he 
was in the House of Burgesses, which were to 
prepare him for the duties of guiding the ship 
of State when independence was accomplished. 
Bancroft has very properly said that if it had 
not been for him the country could not have 
been freed nor formed into a union nor set in 
successful motion as a government. And the 
elements of prophecy were not lacking; for many 
years before, just after one of the bloodiest bat- 
tles with the French for supremacy, in a sermon 
preached to the soldiers, Rev. Samuel Davies 
said, in praising the Virginia troops: "As a re- 
markable instance of this I may point out to the 
public that heroic youth, Col. Washington, 
whom I cannot but hope Providence has hith- 
erto preserved in so signal a manner for some 
important service to his country." 

Washington was again sent to Congress in 
1775, and was soon unanimously elected com- 
mander in chief of the Continental forces raised 
or to be raised in defense of American liberty. 
The English forces had already taken possession 



GREAT SOUTH EENEES. 

of Boston; the war was being waged in earnest; 
the army of England in this country was then 
twenty- four or twenty-five thousand. Undaunt- 
ed, he set out on his mission, and at an early 
day took formal command of the army, which 
numbered only seventeen thousand, including 
twenty-five hundred unfit for duty. Even at 
the time of the declaration of independence the 
men under him numbered not more than twenty 
thousand, six or seven thousand being sick or 
absent on furlough. 

The American force was assuredly very dis- 
couraging in point of numbers with which to ex- 
pect to wrest almost a continent from the sway 
of one of the most powerful nations on the globe. 
The world to-day wonders at the audacity of it. 
But hope is worth very much in the contests 
with power and disaster in this life. Washing- 
ton had that, and it never deserted him through 
the most trying ordeals of the eight-years' strug- 
gle, finally leading to the successes which Fred- 
erick the Great is said to have declared the most 
brilliant achievements recorded in military an- 
nals. Not only had he to cope with a powerful 
army and navy, but a considerable faction in 
Congress were turned against him through the 
intrigues of Brig. -Gen Conway, who endeavored 
to have him relieved of his command. The trea- 
son of Arnold was a most harassing circum- 



UREAT SOUTHERNERS. i 

stance, and the mutiny of many of his soldiers 
required the greatest tact and firmness on his 
part. 

After peace was declared he was elected the 
first President, and succeeded himself four years 
later. Retiring to his plantation, he became in- 
terested in the affairs of the farm, living in com- 
parative peace until 1798, when, on account of a 
threatened war between France and America, he 
was again made lieutenant general and com- 
mander in chief of the American army. War 
being averted, he retired to Mount Vernon, and 
died on the night of December 14, 1799. 

An eminent historian avers that Washington's 
place in the history of mankind is well-nigh 
without a fellow. He has been sung by such 
j)oets as Byron and Tennyson, and praised by 
statesmen like Lord Brougham and Gladstone. 
And indeed he is one of the most wonderful fig- 
ures of all time. Unusually modest, he was 
fearless and heroic; scrupulous to a farthing in 
keeping his accounts, he declined all remunera- 
tion for many of his important public services 
beyond the reimbursements of his outlays; loving 
home life passionately, he was ready to forsake 
it for his country even in old age; and he is the 
first of that type of Christian soldiers who have 
added special luster to the South. 



PATRICK HENRY. 

J ^<"^""'~^^^ It lias been said by 

some one that ciroum- 

\ stances make men, and 

there is much truth in it; 

\ but sometimes men may 

j assist to bring about 

those circumstances 

Hfe*& MB wn ^ cn ma ^e them famous 

Wg Ws or important. 

Of the latter class was 
Patrick Henry. Not only 
did he practice and study that he might succeed, 
but, as we shall see by and by, he was one of the 
prime factors making an epoch that would give 
a wider scope for his talents and himself a more 
extensive audience. Before arriving at his ma- 
jority he did not promise distinction. He was 
married when quite young, and, being thrown on 
his own resources at an early age ? he did not 
succeed in a financial way. He failed as a farm- 
er and as a merchant, and when he finally took 
up the profession of law it was some time before 
it was thought he would be a success in this. 
When one fails he should not give up in de- 
spair, remembering that manv who afterwards 
(S) 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 9 

reached, distinction have known what it was to 
have their plans miscarry and their hopes seem- 
ingly blighted. Henry did not despair, but kept 
trying until he forced the public to recognize 
his worth. 

One of the first cases in which he began to win 
distinction was known as the "Parson's Cause." 
He made a logical argument, and the people saw 
that he had now become eloquent also. From 
this time on he had a paying practice. 

In this same speech he showed that he had 
studied, and had decided opinions on subjects 
pertaining to government, and he was elected to 
the Virginia House of Burgesses when twenty- 
nine years of age. Here, it may said, commenced 
his determined stand against Great Britain — his 
aid in bringing about the circumstances hinted 
at awhile ago, which made him honored and 
famed. The British Parliament in 1765 passed 
the unjust stamp act. He hated everything that 
savored of tyranny, and introduced resolutions 
against it. He was attracting public attention 
by his course in the House of Burgesses, and the 
former leaders therein were becoming j ealous of 
his growing reputation. When he introduced 
the resolutions they opposed them. Henry was 
determined, and made one of his best speeches. 
Thomas Jefferson said that it surpassed anything 
he had ever heard. The result was that five of 



10 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

his resolutions against the act were carried, the 
country became aroused, and the objectionable 
law could not be enforced. The unjust laws of 
a country should be obeyed until they can be 
modified or repealed; but the colonists regarded 
the stamp act as a blow at their rights, and, as 
none of them were allowed to have a voice in 
making or repealing laws, they resolved to op- 
pose it. 

But after awhile (about nine or ten years later) 
he struck England one of the heaviest blows she 
had yet received from the colonies. Indeed, it 
is a strong assertion to make, but perhaps this 
blow was instrumental in bringing about the 
freedom of a continent. The colonists had by 
this time become so opposed to harsh English 
laws that they thought they must fight for their 
rights. They formed a Continental Congress, and 
Henry, Washington, and others were delegates 
from Virginia. A Tory member, Joseph Gallo- 
way, introduced a plea to bring about concilia- 
tion between the mother country and the colo- 
nies. If it could have been sustained, America 
would have become about like Canada — still a 
part of Great Britain, but ruled more wisely and 
j ustly than the colonies. It seemed for a while 
that it would be sustained; a majority of the 
delegates were for the plea, and even Washing- 
ton did not oppose it in debate. War, they 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 11 

knew, was a tearful thing, and England was 
strong and the colonies were weak. But Henry 
had no faith in Great Britain, and no patience 
with the course of her government. He made a 
speech against the plea, and it was defeated by 
the vote of one colony. We remember Henry 
mainly because he was an orator, but we should 
not forget that on that occasion he made the 
United States a possibility. 

This was perhaps the greatest service he ren- 
dered his country, as little as we have thought 
of it, for all the colonists were thus bound by 
their delegates, while Great Britain saw that war 
was now a settled fact. However, the passage in 
his life that is considered the most brilliant was 
when, attending the second revolutionary con- 
vention of Virginia, he made his greatest speech 
— that delivered on March 23, 1775. The con- 
vention met in a church in Richmond. The del- 
egates, it seemed, were hoping against hope for 
something to occur yet to bring about peace; 
Henry had made up his mind that peace without 
a long and bloody struggle 'was impossible. 
They continued to dally; he thundered an in- 
dividual declaration of war. The result of his 
speech was marvelous; the resolutions to pre- 
pare a plan for embodying, arming, and discip- 
lining the militia to resist the. invasion of Great 
Britain were adopted. 



12 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

And now as to the delivery of the speech with 
which every schoolboy has some acquaintance. 
If Henry had not been an orator, he might have 
been a great actor. He possessed strong emo- 
tion and passion. His versatility was such that 
he could assume at once any emotion which 
might best produce an effect. He had a match- 
less control of the organs of expression, and his 
mightiest feelings were sometimes indicated and 
carried to the hearer by a long pause, aided by 
an eloquent aspect and some significant use of 
the ringers. John Randolph, of Roanoke, de- 
clared that he was Shakespeare and Garrick com- 
bined. 

The first part of the speech was delivered 
with calmness and deliberation; but his whole 
demeanor changed when he spoke the words: 
"I repeat it, sir — we must fight! An appeal to 
arms, and to the God of hosts, is all that is left 
us." After this his manner deepened into in- 
tense dramatic power, carrying the audience 
with him. An old clergyman who was present 
stated that his voice rose louder and louder un- 
til the walls of the building, and all within them, 
seemed to shake and rock. Finally his pale face 
and glowing eyes became terrible to look upon. 
Men leaned forward in their seats, with their 
heads strained forward, their faces pale, and 
their eyes glaring like the speaker's. His last 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 13 

exclamation, "Give me liberty, or give me 
death!" was like the shout of a leader which 
turns back the rout of battle. 

Of course the great orator was honored with 
the best offices in the gift of his State. He was 
a number of times Governor of Virginia; and 
Washington, when President, offered to make 
him Secretary of State, and later Chief Justice 
of the United States, but he declined. 



THOMAS JEFFERSON. 




In a speech made be- 
fore the English House 
of Commons in the year 
1775 Edmund Burke, re- 
ferring to America, said: 
"In no country perhaps 
in the world is the law 
so general a study. The 
profession itself is numer- 
ous and powerful, and in 
most provinces it takes 
the lead. The greater number of the delegates 
sent to Congress were lawyers. But all who 
read — and most do read — endeavor to obtain 
some smattering in that science." 

The number of fine lawyers at the beginning 
of the Revolution in America was large, sure 
enough. Where all the trees in a forest are tall 
it takes a giant to tower above the rest. The 
fact that Thomas Jefferson rose to eminence very 
early after beginning the practice of the law, 
and among so many able members of the bar, is 
an indication of his intellectual strength and su- 
periority. 

There was to be great need for such men, for 
(14) 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 15 

a time was coming when they would have to 
make laws for a new nation and help to put it in 
proper running order. When the first war with 
England came on, Jefferson was not known be- 
yond the borders of Virginia, his native State, 
but it was not long after it arose before his rep- 
utation reached England. He was a member of 
the first and second Continental Congresses, and 
at the session held when the delegates resolved 
on a course to pursue he was one of the com- 
mittee of five appointed to prepare a draft of the 
Declaration of Independence, the other members 
being Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, 
and Robert R. Livingston. He became chair- 
man, and was asked to write the document now 
so famous. 

Resigning his seat before the expiration of his 
term, on account of the ill health of his wife, he 
became a member of the Virginia Legislature, 
determined to purge the statute books of unsuit- 
able laws and have others of importance enacted. 
Among the movements of lasting good he set on 
foot at this period were the doing away with the • 
law of entailments (for the perpetual holding of 
lands) and the abolishment of the connection of 
Church and State. Some of the maxims we see 
and hear quoted to-day originated with him while 
in the Virginia Legislature, such, as: "Govern- 
ment has nothing to do with opinion;" "Com- 



16 GREAT SOUTHERNERS, 

pulsion makes hypocrites, not converts; 5 ' and 
"It is error alone which needs the support of 
government; truth can stand by itself." 

The decimal currency now in use in this coun- 
try is a result of his efforts while a member of 
Congress in 1783, The idea originated with 
Governeur Morris, of New York, but it was sim- 
plified and made practical by Jefferson, he pro- 
posing a system of dollars and cents, with dimes, 
half dimes, and a gold coin of ten dollars, with 
such subdivisions as we now have. 

After the war he resided for several years in 
Europe— not through choice, but in a govern- 
mental capacity. He there became impressed 
with certain opinions, which he advocated on 
his return to America, They became a part of 
the doctrines of the Democratic party, and this 
is how he became known as the originator of 
that political organization. One of these ideas 
is that the will of the majority is the natural law 
of every society, 

Jefferson wag prejudiced toward everything 
which smacked of royalty. He advocated sim- 
plicity, and desired to make the republic some- 
thing more than a mere name, When he was 
elected President he put his theories into prac- 
tice, All American boys have heard references 
to "Jeffersonian democracy" and " Jeff ersonian 
simplicity." 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS, 17 

It is held by some that the salaries of our offi- 
cials of the present day are not large enough for 
them to live in the style they should and be re- 
spected. Salaries were much less in Jefferson's 
day. While Secretary of State, during Wash- 
ington's administration, he received only $3,500 
a year. This was inadequate; for, though Jef- 
ferson advised simplicity, he at his home en- 
tertained elaborately. When we consider this, 
with the fact that he served his country at a finan- 
cial loss nearly all the time for forty-four years 
— almost half a century — it is no wonder that his 
once great fortune took wings, and that when he 
retired from office he was impoverished. While 
leaving the public service poor is an indication 
that one has not taken advantage of his position 
in a selfish desire to make money, the thoughtless 
turning loose of a vast fortune and leaving him- 
self dependent in old age may not have reflected 
favorably on the practical sense of Jefferson. 

But, despite his comparative poverty in age, 
and the inconveniences he was put to on account 
of it, he managed to be of great use to his State, 
for he devoted himself to the cause of education. 
In fact, the inscription on his tomb, which was 
prepared by his own hand, shows that he con- 
sidered the work of his latest years of as much 
importance as the two greatest achievements of 
his earlier days. The inscription reads: 
2 



18 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

Here lies buried Thomas Jefferson, Author of the 
Declaration of American Independence, of the Statute 
of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and the Father of 
the University of Virginia. 

The English philosopher, Carlyle, has de- 
clared: "That there should one man die igno- 
rant who had a capacity for knowledge — this I 
call a tragedy, were it to happen more than 
twenty times in a minute, as by some computa- 
tions it does. " Who shall say that Jefferson's es- 
timate of his last efforts for mankind, as shown 
in his obituary, was not a correct one? In an 
enlightened population rests the hope of contin- 
ued prosperity. 



HENRY LEE. 




These is much said con- 
cerning the ' ' New South, " 
referring to this section in 
the after - the - war clays. 
The words were coined by 
some overzealous person 
who was anxious to pro- 
pitiate a certain element 
which has always been 
antagonistic to the old re- 
gime, through envy more 
than anything else; for it is the part of envy to 
cry down that which it cannot equal or rise 
above. 

There is no new South. It is substantially 
what it has always been: a land of patriots, 
strong men, noble women, where the love of the 
Constitution obtains and society is at its best. 
Some political questions have been settled, the 
institution of slavery swept away, and the con- 
ditions of classes somewhat changed; in all oth- 
er respects the old Southern ways are cherished. 

What an interesting section was Virginia, es- 
pecially in the eighteenth century! The owner 
of the plantation was a baron in one respect, 

(19) 



20 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

with his slaves, lands, and "manorial hall;" in 
others he was a fellow-citizen, mixing w T ith the 
common people and discussing political or other 
questions of interest to them. The life was such 
as to develop true greatness among the best 
classes — the intellectual power which dominated 
the government for more than fifty years, though 
the population of the South was numerically 
smaller than that of the North and East. 

A product of that era was the family of Lee, 
distinguished in statesmanship, in war, and in 
society. The founder of the family in Virginia 
sprang from one of the oldest families in En- 
gland, which received from William the Con- 
queror a princely estate in Essex. He was a 
member of the Privy Council of Charles I., and 
early in the reign of that monarch emigrated 
to Virginia. After him rose statesman after 
statesman and warrior after warrior, among them 
Richard Henry, Francis Lightfoot, William, 
Arthur, Henry, Robert E., and Fitzhugh Lee — 
making glorious the annals of more than two 
centuries. 

The fame of Gen. Robert E. Lee has some- 
what overshadowed the reputation of his father, 
Henry Lee, born at Leeslyvania, Westmoreland 
County, Va., in 1756. The latter, however, de- 
serves the title of great as soldier, statesman, 
and author. His mother was Miss Lucy Grymes, 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 21 

a lady of great culture for the times, and beauti- 
ful. She was one of the colonial women for 
whom Washington entertained an unrequited 
affection. She is twice alluded to directly in 
his correspondence as the "lowland beauty;" 
and as we recall her charms — now fallen to dust, 
despite the effort of the artist to embody them 
in his colors — a few lines of Miss Lizette Wood- 
worth Reese's poem on a colonial picture come 
to mind: 

Out of the dusk stepped down 

Young Beauty on the stair; 
What need of April in the town 

When Dolly took the air? 

Lilac the color there, 

So all in lilac she; 
Her kerchief hid from maids and men 

What was too white to see. 

Good Stuart folk her kin, 

And bred in Essex vales ! 
One looked her happy eyes within, 

And heard .the nightingales. 

It is worth noticing that her son in after life 
originated the expression which the public has 
as pat as any other in connection with her old 
lover, the first President: "First in war, first in 
peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen." 

Henry Lee was a gallant soldier in the revo- 
lutionary war, and in 1778 was promoted to the 



22 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

rank of major and placed in command of an in- 
dependent partisan corps, which afterwards be- 
came known as "Lee's Legion," while the young 
commander won the nickname of "Light-Horse 
Harry." He was remarkable for conceiving 
plans of battle and the swiftness with which he 
executed them. 

In 1786 he was called from his retirement at 
Stratford House, in Virginia, and entered upon 
official life, having been chosen a delegate to 
Congress. Later, in the convention called by 
Virginia to decide upon the ratification of the 
Federal Constitution, he ably seconded the ef- 
forts of James Madison and John Marshall in 
defense of that document, and won distinction 
for his eloquence, thus proving himself a man of 
many parts. Warriors are not expected to give 
much attention to oratory, though they may be 
discerning statesmen. Washington was not an 
impressive speaker; Jackson, though he had been 
a lawyer, did not excel in speech- making; and 
Grant was so brief in his addresses that he won 
the title, of "the silent man." But Lee was so 
well known for his power in this line that, on 
the death of Washington, he was appointed to 
deliver an oration commemorating his services. 
On that occasion he used the expression quoted 
earlier in this sketch. 

While Governor of Virginia the whisky in- 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 23 

surrection broke out in Western Pennsylvania. 
President Washington appointed Lee as general 
to command the army sent against the insur- 
gents, and perhaps his reputation as a lighter 
had as much to do in settling the affair without 
bloodshed as the formidable appearance of his 
army of fifteen thousand men. 

In August, 1812, a Federalist newspaper (the 
Republican) published at Baltimore caused a riot 
by its conduct in opposing the war with England. 
The mob attacked the plant of the Republican., 
with the intention of destroying it. Lee hap- 
pened to be in the city at the time, and in the 
effort to defend the property of the editor, who 
was his friend, received injuries from which he 
never recovered. 

Besides being the father of Gen. Robert E. 
Lee, and distinguished in war and statesman- 
ship, "Light-Horse Harry" Lee should have our 
gratitude for one of the most valuable histories 
written by an American in his day. It is called 
"Memoirs of the War in the Southern Depart- 
ment of the United States," and should not be 
allowed to go out of print. 




JAMES MONROE. 

The Monroe doctrine 
is very dear to the hearts 
of Americans. When- 
ever a foreign country 
becomes involved with 
any of the republics of 
this hemisphere, as in 
the case a few years ago 
of England and Venezu- 
ela, we hear much said 
about the Monroe doc- 
trine in the papers and by our statesmen. The 
person who gave the sentiment expression was 
James Monroe, fifth President of the United 
States. 

And what is the doctrine which is loved in 
this country and held in respect by all foreign 
nations? It is contained in two paragraphs of 
a message sent to Congress on December 2, 1823> 
and may be briefly put in these words: 

We should consider any attempt on the part 
of foreign powers to extend their system of gov- 
ernment to any portion of this hemisphere as 
dangerous to our peace and safety. Any inter- 
ference would be viewed by this country as the 
(24) 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 25 

manifestation of an unfriendly disposition to- 
ward the United States. 

Plainly, the United States has become the 
guardian of the North and South American 
governments. Should any of them be invaded 
by foreign countries, the undertaking would be 
resisted by this republic, if the acquirement of 
territory should directly or indirectly be premed- 
itated. 

But Monroe's services to his country by no 
means end in the formulation of this warning to 
the powers to keep off American soil. When 
the Confederacy was first formed its weakness 
became apparent to him, and he thought se- 
riously that we were verging toward a monar- 
chal government, a system which was very 
distasteful to him. In behalf of the Confedera- 
cy he proposed measures whose value was sum- 
marized in this expression of John Quincy Ad- 
ams: "They led first to the partial convention 
of delegates from five States, at Annapolis, in 
1786, and then to the general convention in 
Philadelphia, in 1787, which prepared and pro- 
posed the Constitution of the United States. 
Whoever contributed to that event is justly en- 
titled to the gratitude of the present age as a 
benefactor, and among them the name of Mon- 
roe should be conspicuously enrolled." 

In the first years of the United States politics 



26 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

was as bitter as it is to-day. Washington had 
many political enemies, and Monroe was one of 
the determined opponents of his Presidential 
administration. But Washington was not only 
a strategist in war, but he skillfully managed 
politics also. He fell on a plan to somewhat 
placate Monroe by making him Minister to 
France to succeed "Gouveneur Morris. Monroe 
was known to be favorable to France, too, which 
country was now on somewhat unfriendly terms 
with the United States. On account of his un- 
due cordiality to that nation, on his arrival there 
he was recalled; but when Thomas Jefferson was 
elected President he was again given the French 
mission. His services proved of invaluable 
gain to the United States, as, with the assist- 
ance of Robert R. Livinston, he effected the 
purchase of the extensive region known as Louis- 
iana. The price paid France was 80,000,000 
francs for her American possessions and the 
control of the mouth of the Mississippi River. 
England had been anxious for the prize, and 
when the deal was consummated Bonaparte 
said prophetically: "I have given to England a 
maritime rival that will sooner or later humble 
her pride." 

During the second war with England Monroe 
Avas Secretary of War. It is thought by some 
critics that the conduct of the war was weak. 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 27 

Washington was taken, and the British admiral, 
Cockburn, entered the Hall of Representatives 
at the head of a band of followers, and, spring- 
ing into the Speaker's chair, shouted: " Shall 
this harbor of Yankee Democracy be burned? 
All for it say, 'Aye.'" The public buildings 
were burned, and it looked for a while as if the 
country would be ruined. It was a day of hu 
filiation for Americans. But the administration 
probably did as well as any would have done under 
the circumstances. England was a great power, 
strong on land and sea, while America was as 
yet a babe among nations. Such reverses have 
occurred where the countries are mightier than 
the United States at that time. It may be par- 
donable here to say that any power would 
not find the taking of our capital so easy a job 
now. In the words of a modern dialect versi- 
fier: 

The sun may set on our domains, 

'Tis true — we don't deny it. 
If others think that they can, too, 

All is, jest let 'em try it! 

Monroe was President of the United States 
two terms. So popular was his first administra- 
tion that his second election was almost unani- 
mous. Only one electoral vote was cast in op- 
position, we believe. 

To sum up, the principal subjects marking 



28 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

Monroe's administration were: The defense of 
the Atlantic seaboard; the promotion of inter- 
nal improvements, in which he took grounds 
that the general government should undertake 
only works of national significance, leaving mi- 
nor improvements to the separate States; the 
conduct of the Seminole war; the acquisition of 
Florida by purchase; the great Missouri com- 
promise relative to the extension of slavery; and 
the resistence to foreign interference in Amer- 
ican affairs, formulated in the Monroe doctrine. 
A notable event in his career is the fact that 
he served as a local magistrate after having 
been President. The prevailing principle of his 
life was that America should be for Americans. 



JOHN MARSHALL. 




Is the profession of 
law "the surest road to 
distinction?" It is re- 
lated of Dr. Johnson that 
he was sitting with friends 
in an English inn once, 
when a neatly dressed, 
civil - mannered stranger 
entered. Curiosity led 
one of the company to 
wonder who he was. ' ' I 
do not wish to slander any man," said Dr. John- 
son, "but I would guess that he is a lawyer." 
This was evidently an effort at humor by the 
friend of Boswell. 

Such a poor regard for lawyers did not exist 
in the United States, at least in the earlier days 
of the nation, for the lawyers made one of the 
mainstays of the new government. 

John Marshall, statesman and jurist, was born 
in Virginia in 1755. He was a soldier of the 
Revolution, but took up the law after peace had 
been agreed upon, and entered with enthusiasm 
upon his chosen profession. In a short while he 

(29) 



30 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

was employed in every important case that came 
up in the State and United States courts in Vir- 
ginia. In 1795, when forty years of age, he was 
offered the position of Attorney-General of the 
United States by Washington, but declined it. 

When John Adams became President he ap- 
pointed Marshall, Pinckney, and Elbridge Gerry 
joint envoys to France for the purpose of estab- 
lishing diplomatic relations with that republic. 
The French were feeling sore because the United 
States would not tolerate their seizing British 
property and persons on board American ves- 
sels. During their stay in France, in the capac- 
ity of joint envoys, there occurred the celebra- 
ted intrigue of Talleyrand, Minister of Foreign 
Affairs, which placed the French government in 
the attitude of a footpad or solicitor of alms. 
When the envoys reached Paris they communi- 
cated with Talleyrand. They were met by M. 
Hollinguer, a secret agent of the minister. He 
explained that the French Directory was much 
displeased with President Adams's recent mes- 
sage to the American Congress, recommending 
preparations for war against France; but if the 
message were modified, money given to Talley- 
rand, and a loan made to the government, he 
had no doubt the envoys would be received. A 
second agent was sent to them, and referred to 
modifying the objectionable passages of the mes- 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 31 

sage. "Gentlemen," he then said, "I will not 
disguise from you the fact that, this satisfaction 
being made, the essential part of the treaty must 
be made. It is necessary to pay money — to pay 
a great deal of money." This proposition was 
made time and again: fifty thousand pounds 
sterling for the shameless minister, besides the 
loan to the government. Talleyrand himself 
made the proposition to Mr. Gerry on one occa- 
sion. 

Indignant at the attempt to extort a bribe from 
them, and at other insults, the envoys refused 
to hold further intercourse with France, and re- 
plied, when pressed for their reply: "It is no, 
no; not a sixpence!" 

The hope of the envoys to treat with France 
failed, and Pinckney and Marshall were ordered 
to leave; while Gerry, being a Republican, was 
allowed to remain. Naturally these events creat- 
ed indignation in America. As Marshall after- 
wards said in his life of Washington, history will 
scarcely furnish the example of a nation not ab- 
solutely degraded, which has experienced from 
a foreign power such open contumely and un- 
disguised insult as were thus offered the United 
States in the persons of their Ministers. But the 
country was then in a manner helpless. 

When Marshall returned to the United States, 
in 1798, he was received with demonstrations of 



32 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

respect; at a largely attended dinner given him 
in Philadelphia one of the toasts was: "Millions 
for defense; not a cent for tribute." Of Mar- 
shall's course in Europe President Adams said in 
a letter: "He has raised the American people in 
their own esteem; and, if the influence of truth 
and justice, reason and argument, is not lost in 
Europe, he has raised the consideration of the 
United States in that quarter of the world." 

In 1799 Marshall was elected to Congress. 
While a member the principles that have since 
guided the courts and government of the United 
States in extradition cases were settled, and 
mainly settled through Marshall's efforts in the 
House. Jonathan Robbing, alias Thomas Nash, 
had been arrested in Charleston at the instance 
of the British Consul, on the charge of mutiny 
and murder on the British frigate Hermione." 
Under the writ of habeus corpus he was deliv- 
ered to the British authorities in pursuance of 
the requisition of the British ministry upon the 
President and of a letter from the Secretary of 
State to the trial judge, advising the delivery. 
A determined assault was made on the adminis- 
tration. Resolutions censuring the President 
and the judge were offered in the House; but 
Marshall, in an eloquent speech, refuted the 
charges of law on which the resolutions were 
based, and they were defeated. That case, de- 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 33 

fended by him, established a precedent, and is 
regarded as authority to-day. 

When he became Chief Justice of the United 
States the great trial of Aaron Burr for treason 
and misdemeanor came up. Burr, it will be re- 
called, was a statesman who was once very pop- 
ular not only in his native State (New York), 
but throughout America. He was hated by Al- 
exander Hamilton, and that statesman was often 
instrumental in balking the former's ambitions. 
Burr challenged him to a duel, and Hamilton 
was killed. His political prospects* after this 
were blighted; and, being still ambitious, he 
conceived the design, apparently, of conquering 
Texas and perhaps Mexico, if a sufficient follow- 
ing could be secured. When his plans were 
nearly matured the President of the United 
States, on October 27, 1806, issued a proclama- 
tion denouncing the enterprise. Burr was ar- 
rested in Mississippi, but escaped, and was then 
recaptured in Alabama. The trial was one of 
the most important state trials before the im- 
peachment of Andrew Johnson. It took place 
at Richmond. Burr's lawyers were Edmund 
Randolph, John Wickham, John Baker, and 
Luther Martin. William Wirt was principal 
counsel for the United States. The jury was 
made up of the best men in the State, John Ran- 
dolph, of Roanoke, being foreman. Though 
3 



34 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

President Jefferson wanted Burr convicted, 
Judge Marshall presided with rigid impartiali- 
ty throughout, and held that the President him- 
self could be summoned as a witness. 

A great Englishman, referring to Goethe, 
says: "As his primary faculty, the foundation 
of all others, was intellect, depth, and force of 
vision, so his primary virtue was justice, was 
the courage to be just." Nothing in the life of 
Marshall was so exalting as the unswerving im- 
partiality he displayed in this celebrated trial, 
even though a nation called in its excitement for 
Burr's conviction. An impartial holding of the 
scales not only overawes the criminal, but 
strenghens the faith of the law-abiding in our 
tribunals of justice. 




JAMES MADISON. 

At the age of twenty- 
five James Madison began 
to be known throughout 
Virginia for the range and 
solidity of his attain- 
ments. For minute and 
thorough knowledge of 
ancient and modern his- 
tory and constitutional 
law he was unequaled 
perhaps by any American 
of the Revolutionary era, and only by Calhoun 
of a later period. 

He was, at the beginning of his public life, in 
favor of measures that might increase the strength 
of the Federal government, though afterwards he 
became a very stanch supporter of State rights; 
and his whole career, as has been said, is calcu- 
lated to illustrate the remark that l ' intelligent 
persistence is capable of making one person a 
majority." 

Among his most important early services were 
his efforts in connection with the founding of 
the government. He was the originator of one 
of the successful compromises which have been 

(35) 



36 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

so often introduced in American politics to fore- 
stall or postpone the great crisis which finally 
came in the civil war of 1861-65. This was the 
compromise adjusting the distribution of repre- 
sentatives between the Northern and Southern 
States, in framing the Federal Constitution. The 
Southern people wanted to count slaves as pop- 
ulation, while those of the North thought they 
should be classed as property, the positions of 
the two sections being reversed from what they 
were in 1783, when the question of taxation had 
come up. With the people at large, as well as 
with individuals, it makes a great difference as 
to whose ox is gored. He suggested, and it was 
agreed to, that in counting population, whether 
for direct taxation or for representation in the 
lower house of Congress, five slaves should be 
reckoned as three individuals. To secure the 
adoption of the Constitution it was absolutely 
necessary to satisfy South Carolina. This prop- 
osition of Madison's satisfied that State, and the 
scheme, then seriously thought of and perhaps 
entirely feasible at the time, of establishing a 
separate Confederacy of the Southern States was 
defeated. This three-fifths rule affected almost 
every political movement in America before the 
civil war. 

But, while South Carolina's wishes were thus 
regarded, there was yet serious opposition to the 



GREAT SOUTHERNS ERS. 37 

adoption of the Constitution. To explain and 
defend it Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and 
John Jay published a series of papers under the 
title of "The Federalist," which brought about 
ratification. " These are perhaps the ablest po- 
litical essays in the English language," declares 
Prof. Brander Matthews in his introduction to a 
work on American literature. Political science 
has never been given to the world in such prac- 
tical and profound manner. 

In 1791 the Constitution again came up for 
discussion. It was claimed that it contained no 
bill of rights. To meet this objection Madison 
proposed, as a member of the first National House 
of Representatives, twelve amendments. The 
first ten became a part of the Constitution. 

The Federalist party being in power, the fa- 
mous alien and sedition laws were passed, under 
the leadership of Hamilton. These were op- 
posed by the Republican - Democratic party, 
which greatly profited by the revulsion of the 
public mind against the acts; and in their dis- 
cussion the question of State rights began to be 
intruded into politics more prominently. A se- 
ries of resolutions was drawn up by Madison in 
1798 (most young readers have heard the political 
orators refer to these resolutions), and adopted 
by the Virginia Legislature. A similar series, 
by Thomas Jefferson, was adopted by the Legis- 



38 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

lature of Kentucky in the same year. The Vir- 
ginia resolutions declared that when the Federal 
government should exceed its authority the State 
could interfere and pronounce such action uncon- 
stitutional; and Virginia pronounced the alien 
and sedition laws unconstitutional. Those of 
Kentucky declared that the Federal Constitution 
was a compact, the several States "being one party 
and the Federal government the other, and each 
party must decide for itself when the compact 
was infringed and upon the proper remedy. The 
Kentucky resolutions, when repeated in 1799, 
mentioned that to hold objectionable laws null 
was the proper remedy. 

Thus disunion was again becoming a serious 
question, and South Carolina attempted nullifi- 
cation in 1832, which aroused President Jackson. 
It should be stated that Madison afterwards de- 
clared that the Virginia resolutions contained 
no basis for nullification or secession, which he 
termed ' ' twin heresies. " 

It should be explained here also that no sec- 
tion of the country at this time regarded seces- 
sion as being wrong in principle, and the North 
as well as the South threatened to withdraw 
whenever there was friction of interests. To be 
explicit, during the war of 1812 with England a 
number of reverses to our arms made it unpopu- 
lar with the New England people, and it is al- 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 39 

most certain they began taking steps to secede 
and to establish a Northern Confederacy. This 
was while Madison was President. While 
Aaron Burr was Vice President there were 
threats of secession by New England leaders. 

Madison will be thought of in connection with 
the founders of the government, and he has taken 
his place in history with Washington, Jefferson, 
and Hamilton. 

The second war with Great Britain came up 
during Madison's administration as President, 
and the incidents of his life during the time are 
of absorbing interest. 



-JOHN SEVIER. 




There is such a thing 
as a growing reputation. 
Owing to a condition of 
the public mind, it is 
sometimes the case that a 
man dies with but limited 
fame; his contemporaries 
are not able to give him 
his j ust deserts. This has 
been explained by a dis- 
till gi shed man in his re- 
ference to the poet Burns. It is impossible, 
he says, for men to believe that the man, the 
mere man, toiling along by their side through the 
poor jostlings of existence, can be made of finer 
clay than themselves. At last his fame begins 
to broaden, until we wonder how it was that his 
worth was not recognized and appreciated to its 
fullest. The great poet Shakespeare was not ac- 
cepted as a classic until some two centuries after 
he lived. Gen. Robert E. Lee was recognized as 
a great soldier; but his reputation has grown 
since his death, so that a Northern historian 
(Prof. Andrews) asserts that he was the greatest 
general of our civil war. 
(40) 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 41 

John Sevier, soldier, Indian fighter, and states- 
man — one of the builders of the State of Tennes- 
see — is just beginning to be appreciated proper- 
ly, more than seventy-five years after his death. 
Unlike the professional men of his time (he was 
born in Virginia on September 23, 1745), Sevier 
did not have the advantage of an education and 
access to such libraries as were extant; neither 
did he have the social station accorded members 
of wealthy families. But he proved the truth of 
the poet's averment that honor and fame from 
no condition rise. 

It is recorded that he married when about 
eighteen years of age. This is probably true, 
as at the battle of King's Mountain, in 1780, 
when only thirty-five years of age, he had two 
sons to take part in that memorable fight. In 
the spring of* 1772 he emigrated to the first set- 
tlement located on what is now Tennessee soil, 
Watauga. In his new home he soon became 
prominent as an Indian fighter — something of 
vastly more importance in that section and at 
that period than the eloquence of Henry or the 
legal learning of Jefferson. The Indians were 
naturally jealous of the encroachments of the 
whites, and after the war of the Revolution be- 
gan they were incited by British agents to ex- 
terminate the settlers or drive them back among 
the older colonies. Through his vigilance and 



42 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

skill in Indian warfare the women and children 
of the North Carolina border were saved from 
butchery, and the settlements permitted to grow 
and spread until the new territory should become 
a thriving State. 

Sevier was one of the most chivalrous of men, 
but his mode of fighting the savages was terrible 
and thorough. They were not molested unless 
they invaded and massacred the whites; but when 
they did this, he pursued them into their own 
country and left their fields and homes a scene 
of desolation. The Indians were treacherous, 
cruel, and relentless in their hate, and he knew 
that less harsh measures would not serve as a 
protection to his people. His adventures are 
more thrilling than the most stirring romance. 
He introduced the Indian war whoop among his 
brave mountain followers, and though he was in 
thirty-five battles he never lost an engagement. 

Although Sevier's attention was needed to re- 
pel Indian invasions, he saw some service in the 
closing scenes of the Revolution. His chief ex- 
ploit was at King's Mountain. Ferguson, an 
English officer, threatened the borders. Sevier 
and another pioneer (Isaac Shelby) raised a body 
of five hundred troops for the purpose of over- 
taking and surprising the Englishman. They 
induced Col. William Campbell, of Virginia, to 
join them with four hundred men, and, to gain 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 43 

his strong cooperation, elected him commander 
of the united forces. Other reinforcements were 
secured, making in all about fifteen hundred 
men. Ferguson had threatened to burn and de- 
stroy the settlements unless the mountaineers 
should return to their allegiance, and had ad- 
vanced as far as Gilbert Town to execute his 
threat. There he heard of the approach of 
Campbell's men, and began a retreat, finally 
reaching King's Mountain, hoping to unite with 
Cornwallis. He selected a point which could 
not be approached from any direction without 
encountering the fire of those on top. But the 
patriots were determined. Campbell's plan was 
to surround Ferguson on all sides and prevent 
him from concentrating an army. The two regi- 
ments of Campbell and Col. Shelby were sent 
directly up the sides of the mountain, to divert 
the enemy, while Sevier and the others sur- 
rounded them. The attack was gallant and the 
defense was fierce, but after a sanguinary con- 
flict the British surrendered. Ferguson was 
killed before the surrender. All the enemy, 
eight hundred, were captured, and fifteen hun- 
dred stands of arms taken. This battle has al 7 
ways figured as the turning point in the struggle 
for independence, and the part taken by Sevier 
and his compatriots was duly recognized by the 



44 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

General Assembly of North Carolina, by Gen. 
Greene, and by the patriots everywhere. 

In 1784 the Assembly of North Carolina passed 
an act ceding to the United States all the terri- 
tory which is now Tennessee, Congress to accept 
it within two years. The frontiersmen became 
alarmed. They considered themselves from un- 
der the protection of both North Carolina and 
the general government. They would be left, 
they reasoned, without any form of government 
for two years. During two years of lawlessness 
and disorder what would be the result to the 
settlements. In their wrath and alarm the pi- 
oneers turned to Sevier, determined to organize 
a separate State. He was idolized by the moun- 
taineers. He had proven himself even then able 
in a civil as well as in a military way. He was 
chosen to lead, and the State of Franklin was 
formed of the East Tennessee counties. He was 
made the first and only Governor, the people of 
his section finally becoming reconciled to North 
Carolina. The new State collapsed after an ex- 
istence of three or four years. 

Success brings honor, and failure odium, gen- 
erally; but somehow the collapse of his scheme 
to make a State did not make Sevier unpopular. 
None but certain political enemies desired to 
have him tried for treason, for his many services 
to the public in those trying times were not for- 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 45 

gotten. Some months afterwards he was elected 
to the North Carolina Senate, and took his seat; 
and following this came his appointment as brig- 
adier general and his election to Congress from 
the State which at one time was prosecuting him 
for treason. 

When Tennessee was admitted to the Union, 
in 1796, he became the first Governor, and held 
the office six times in all. He was also elected a 
member of Congress twice. 

In 1815 he was appointed by President Mon- 
roe to locate the boundary lines of the territory 
of the Creek Indians, and died in Alabama in 
the autumn of that year. 

Sevier was a great organizer, and, as far as 
Tennessee was concerned, brought order out of 
chaos. This tribute, paid him by one of his 
latest biographers, is not too high: "Of all 
whose fame was attained within the limits of 
this State (Tennessee), the most illustrious, the 
most conspicuous, the one whose name was and 
deserves still to be the most resplendent, was 
John Sevier." 




ANDREW JACKSON. 

The most popular man 
in Tennessee up to the 
battle of New Orleans, in 
1815, was John Sevier. 
After Sevier's death, and 
until the civil war, An- 
drew Jackson was the 
most prominent man of 
all Tennesseeans. He 
came into notoriety just 
in time to overshadow 
the reputation of Sevier. 

The first opportunity Jackson had of bringing 
himself prominently before the public was when 
the Creek Indians, becoming allies of Great Brit- 
ain in the war of 1812, made a final struggle to 
arrest the progress of civilization in the South- 
west. The quickness of Jackson's movements 
and the force with which he struck the savages 
marked him not only as a great fighter, but as 
one able to command. This reputation was en- 
hanced by the New Orleans affair, in which he 
so successfully repelled the assault of Paken- 
ham's veterans; and the result was that, as he 
(46) 



GKEAT SOUTHERNERS. 47 

was now the popular hero of the nation, he was 
called to preside as its chief executive. 

It is not always the case that wise statesman- 
ship is combined with great generalship, but 
Jackson certainly dispelled any belief that such 
a combination was impossible. He had settled 
and original convictions on questions of political 
economy. 

He began making certain innovations soon aft- 
er being inaugurated President, in 1829. The 
advisers of the former Presidents had been se- 
lected from the best-known and ablest men of 
the country; he selected as his some intimate 
friends who held no important offices, and they 
became known as the " Kitchen Cabinet." His 
predecessors had proceeded on the theory that 
public office is a public trust, in treating the 
civil service; he thought that to the victors be- 
long the spoils— a system, by the way, which 
had been previously perfected in the State poli- 
tics of New York and Pennsylvania. Between 
April 30, 1789, and March 4, 1829, the total re- 
movals of governmental officers from positions 
was only seventy-four; between March 4, 1829, 
and March 22, 1830, Jackson made about two 
thousand changes in the civil service. 

During Jackson's first administration there 
came about a division of political parties. That 
which opposed internal improvements, protect- 



48 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

ive tariffs, etc. , retained the name of Democrat- 
ic, dropping the full designation of Republican- 
Democratic party; while that of the loose con- 
structionists, under the leadership of Henry- 
Clay, became the Whig party. 

Unlike his celebrated political rival, Calhoun, 
Jackson took a stand against nullification, and, in 
addition to this, made war on the United States 
Bank. State banks afterwards sprung up, which 
finally brought about the great financial panic of 
1837, that scattered thousands of private for- 
tunes and prepared the way for the first Whig 
victory, in 1840. 

In foreign affairs the administration of Jack- 
son won deserved credit. France owed the 
United States a claim of $5,000,000, which she 
seemed in no hurry to pay. The fighting in- 
stinct was always dominant in him, and in his 
message to Congress in 1834 he recommended 
that a law should be passed authorizing the cap- 
ture of enough French vessels to pay the amount 
due. France promptly paid up, and the great 
commoner, the rough-and-ready fighter, thus 
forced foreign powers to understand that the 
United States must be recognized. 

The incidents of Andrew Jackson's individual 
career are as interesting as those of his public 
life, almost, which tend to make him the popu- 
lar hero that he is, as well as an attractive sub- 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 49 

ject for the historian. While Parton has dam- 
aged him among the thoughtful, and Sumner 
sinks him as a general, he will always have a 
hold on the people. The fact that he was the 
first President from the middle class; that he 
was knightly in his devotion to his wife, who 
was mercilessly and malignantly slandered until 
her death; that he was the incarnation of courage; 
that he was a great general, as well as a states- 
man of considerable ability, this will forever 
surround his name with a romantic interest. If 
he was not in all things what we admire, he was 
a product of the times, and certainly possessed 
gifts that were of manifest need to his country. 
While Jackson stormed his way through life, 
and while his administration was during a time 
of political excitement and threatened upheaval 
of established institutions, the period of his 
Presidency was an important one to this coun- 
try, witnessing the introduction of railroads, 
agricultural machines, and the modern type of 
daily newspapers, the steady immigration from 
Europe, and the "blooming of American litera- 
ture." 
4 



PETER CARTWRIGHT. 








The events in the lives 
of the pioneer preachers 
make interesting reading 
indeed, as suggested 
elsewhere. If they 
were given in full, with 
the adventures, hard- 
ships, and sacrifices of 
the clergy, no romance 
would be more fascina- 
ting. The present gen- 
eration, too, would be astonished at the modes 
hit upon by some of the ministers to compel 
attention to their teaching. It is recorded 
that one young preacher, noticing that a lady 
was not as observant as she should have been, 
stopped in his discourse at a Methodist meet- 
ing and threw his hymn book across the room 
into her lap. Very naturally, even in those 
early days, this rudeness came near breaking 
up the services. In the Home Circle a num- 
ber of years ago there was an extended sketch 
of Rev. James Axley, an eccentric but pow- 
erful preacher of the Methodist denomination. 
(50) 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 51 

"In the pulpit he stood erect and nearly still, 
gesticulated very little, and only occasionally 
turning slowly from side to side, that he might 
see all his auditors," says the writer of the 
sketch. "If the weather was warm, it was 
very common with him, after opening the serv- 
ices with song and prayer, to deliberately take 
off his coat, hang it in the pulpit, hold his Bi- 
ble in one hand, and thrust the other deep down 
into his capacious vest pocket, and thus pro- 
ceed with his sermon. He was a natural ora- 
tor, after the best models — those which nature 
forms." Rev. Jacob Young, referring to a Con- 
ference in Chillicothe, Ohio, in 1808, says among 
other things in his autobiography: "This was 
the first Conference ever held in Chillicothe, 
and, I believe, the first held in Ohio. Multi- 
tudes from the East, North, South, and West 
attended. Although our congregations were 
large, they were very peaceful. We had no 
disturbance till about the middle of the session, 
and that was brought on by a couple of preach- 
ers who had a great deal more zeal than knowl- 
edge. They raised a rumpus with a young man 
by the name of Rector, from Rectortown, in 
Maryland." Mr. Young gives an account of 
his journey from Nashville to Natchez, which 
shows the wildness of the territory in which the 
ministers then worked. On the road they met 



52 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

"Col." George Colbert, a half-breed Indian. 
"He was a very shrewd, talented man, and 
withal very wicked," continues Young. "He 
had two wives. They were Cherokees, daugh- 
ters of the famous chief, Double Head. Col. 
George was a Chickasaw. He and his brother 
had a large farm, and about forty negroes work- 
ing. We bought some corn, pumpkins, and 
corn blades, for which he charged us a very high 
price. We sat down and had a social chat, and 
were considerably entertained with his shrewd- 
ness and witticism. He inquired where we 
were going. We told him to Natchez. He 
then inquired our business. We told him we 
were going to preach. He laughed. 'Ah,' said 
he, c Natchez people great for preach, but they 
be poor, lazy, thieving, bad people.' We de- 
fended our cause as much as we thought neces- 
sary. He then asked where we were from. 
We told him from Kentucky. < Kentuckian bad 
people, and white man worse than Indian every- 
where, though they have much preach and learn 
much. Indians never know how to steal till 
white man learn them ; never get drunk or 
swear till white man learn them. We don't 
want any preaching in this country. We are 
free, and intend to keep so.'" 

An important figure in those primitive and 
adventurous days, though very erratic, Peter 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 53 

Cartwright went about the service of his Lord 
and Master. He was born in Virginia in 
1785, his father having been an American sol- 
dier in the revolutionary war. When five years 
of age the family removed to Kentucky. At 
that time there was not a newspaper printed 
south of Green River, no schools worthy the 
name, and no mills within forty miles. Ac- 
cording to his own account, clothing was home- 
made from the cotton and flax, but imported 
tea, coffee, and sugar were entirely unknown. 
Until he reached the age of sixteen Peter was a 
very wild boy, fond of card-j:>laymg, dancing, 
and horse-racing. When the great camp meet- 
ing was held at Cane Ridge, the Cartwrights 
attended, with thousands of others. The boy 
was awakened to a sense of his sinfulness, but 
fought against his convictions for some time. 
Finally he fell under conviction, sold a favorite 
race horse, burned his cards, gave up gambling, 
and was converted. He immediately began to 
preach as a local, but at the age of seventeen 
was received into the regular ministry, and was 
ordained a Methodist elder by Bishop Asbury in 
1806. He was after this prominent in religious 
work in the Southwest, and especially in the 
Middle Tennessee settlements. Referring to 
his work and that of others in 1806 or 1807, he 
says: "I think I received about forty dollars 



54 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

this year, but many of our preachers did not re- 
ceive half that amount. These were hard times 
in those Western wilds. Many, very many, 
pious and useful preachers were literally starved 
into a location. I do not mean that they were 
starved for want of food; for, although it was 
rough, yet the preachers generally got enough 
to eat. But they did not generally receive, in a 
whole year, money enough to get them a suit of 
clothes; and if people, and preachers too, had 
not dressed in homespun clothing, and the good 
sisters had not made and presented their preach- 
ers with clothing, they generally must retire 
from itinerant life and go to work and clothe 
themselves." 

In a sketch contributed to McFerrin's "Meth- 
odism in Tennessee " an acquaintance pays this 
tribute to Cartwright: "About the year 1818 
Peter Cartwright traveled the Red River Cir- 
cuit. His home was thirty miles from the near- 
est appointment, which was Guim's Society. I 
have known him to leave home and be at our 
house at eleven o'clock, preach and hold class 
meeting, and then go five miles and preach at 
four o'clock; then ride five miles and preach at 
night, carrying his saddlebags of books for sale. 
I never knew him to get hoarse or appear tired. 
He was death upon whisky-drinking, tobacco- 
chewing, and coffee- drinking. Take him alto- 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 55 

gether, he was one of the most powerful men I 
ever heard." 

Numerous stories are told of his personal 
prowess in dealing with the rough characters of 
the frontier, who often sought to interrupt his 
meetings, and whom he almost invariably van- 
quished by moral suasion, if possible; if he 
failed in that, he did not hesitate to resort to 
physical force — "by the arm of flesh," as a bi- 
ographer puts it. 

In 1823 he removed to Illinois, the section to 
which he went being peopled by only a few pi- 
oneers. He was after awhile elected to the Leg- 
islature, and in this sphere his courage and wit 
made him the victor in many debates. He at- 
tended Annual Conference for many years, and 
found his greatest happiness in the camp meet- 
ings. 

From an early period he was opposed to sla- 
very, and when the rupture between the North- 
ern and Southern parts of his Church took place, 
in 1844, he sided with the Northern wing. 

He remained a Democrat all the time, howev- 
er, and was the candidate of his party for Con- 
gress in 1846 against Abraham Lincoln, who de- 
feated him by a majority of fifteen hundred 
votes. 

For more than a half century he was a pre- 
siding elder. In Conference meetings he was 



56 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

loved and dreaded, for he did not hesitate to ar- 
raign the bishops to their face. He would have 
been another Elijah, fearless to rebuke kings if 
he considered them out of their path of duty; a 
sturdy, rugged character, a product of the 
times, and, we might say, a necessity in the 
work to which he gave so many years. "His 
influence is powerful," it is now said of him, 
and his strong good sense often shaped the pol- 
icy of the whole denomination. His pamphlet, 
"Controversy with the Devil," was once fa- 
mous. His autobiography is a fair picture of 
the period in which he lived. 




JOHN PENDLETON KENNEDY. 

It is only during com- 
paratively recent years 
that Southerners have de- 
voted themselves serious- 
ly to literature. From 
the earliest days they 
have paid attention to 
law and statecraft, and 
even then the law was 
studied mainly for the 
advantages it would give 
in statesman ship and commonwealth-building. 

Very little prose of any permanent value as 
literature has come down to us from the begin- 
ning of civilization in Virginia to the first quar- 
ter of the nineteenth century. The writings of 
Jefferson and Madison are appreciated for their 
political wisdom. Wirt's ' ' Life of Patrick Hen- 
ry" has some literary merit, and this much can 
perhaps be said of John Marshall's "Life of 
Washington." The biographies of Washington 
and Marion, by Mason Locke Weems, are among 
the most successful of the earlier literary at- 
tempts, speaking from a financial standpoint. 
Weems's "Life of Washington" deserves more 

(57) 



58 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

than a passing reference, since to that book is 
due one type we have of Washington. It went 
through forty editions, and, according to a sketch 
in Appleton's " Cyclopedia of American Biogra- 
phy," written as late as 1889, it is still sold in the 
rural districts of many parts of the country, and 
is the most popular life of. the first President in 
existence. It was first published in 1800, and 
so has abided a century, and bids fair to survive 
years yet. How few books published since and 
heralded by the critics as of great worth have sur- 
vived the changes of even fifty years! Weems's 
name is very familiar to have been carved on the 
tomb in 1825. How is his fame accounted for? 
Why does his book live if possessing so little 
merit? A distinguished French critic has said 
that if a book pleases, seek to judge it by no 
higher standard; it is a good work and builded 
by a good workman. The "Life of Washing- 
ton" was greatly enjoyed around the firesides of 
our forefathers, and may yet be found, dingy and 
leather-bound, among the few books resting on 
a table in the best room of many a farmer and 
villager. If it has not appealed to the critics, it 
has assisted materially in awakening the patriot- 
ism and emulation of thousands of Americans 
besides Abraham Lincoln. 

In John P. Kennedy, however, we have an au- 
thor who has impressed not only the masses, but 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 59 

to some extent the critics— those judges who 
make it a point to decide for us what is good, 
bad, or indifferent in letters. "Swallow Barn" 
was his first book. It met with a flattering re- 
ception locally, and was followed in 1835 by 
"Horseshoe Robinson," a tale of the Tory as- 
cendency. It was the most successful of his 
works. In addition to another story, "Rob of 
the Bowl," describing the province of Maryland 
in the days of the second Lord Baltimore, he 
wrote a life of William Wirt and published a 
number of discourses on various subjects. 

He was always kind to struggling merit. In- 
deed, he sought it out, and, where possible, ad- 
vanced it. He was an early and steadfast friend 
of Edgar A. Poe, the great but ill-starred poet. 
Poe declared that Kennedy was his first friend, 
and that if it had not been for his good offices 
he would have died of starvation in Baltimore. 

Kennedy was elected to Congress several 
times, and was once Secretary of the Navy. 
After the close of the civil war he went to Eu- 
rope, and while there became the friend of 
William M. Thackeray, the well-known En- 
glish novelist. Thackeray, like other writers of 
serials in those days, did not finish a work be- 
fore publication in the papers was commenced, 
but wrote the installments as they were to ap- 
pear. Once, while they were in Paris, he re- 



60 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

marked to the American that his book, "The 
Virginians," was being published monthly in 
London, and jestingly suggested to Kennedy to 
write the copy for the next chapter that was to 
appear. The latter agreed. This chapter was 
the fourth of the second volume. The circum- 
stance may account for the accuracy of Virginia 
scenery therein described, though the story has 
been vigorously denied by some of Thackeray's 
admirers. 

Kennedy's best work is pleasing, his style be- 
ing clear and concise. That it is so may be con- 
cluded from the fact that the reader of Thack- 
eray's novel referred to does not notice any 
crudeness in the chapter written by the South- 
erner, no falling off in any respect from the style 
of the great Englishman. 

As Bryant was the pioneer poet of America, 
Kennedy is the pioneer Southern novelist. This 
fact, as well as his works, will help to keep his 
memory green. 




EDGAR ALLAN POE. 

In his "Introduction 
to American Literature" 
Prof. Brander Matthews 
avers that "The Raven" 
is perhaps the most wide- 
ly known poem written 
hy any American to this 
day. Its author, Edgar 
A. Poe, was a Southerner. 
After arriving at man- 
hood, and having spent 
several years in alternate dissipation and hard 
literary work, he took up his abode in Baltimore. 
Here he met with but little success. The fact of 
his poverty at that time is made plain by the fol- 
lowing entry in the diary of the novelist, John 
P. Kennedy: "It is many years ago, perhaps as 
early as 1833 or 1834, that I found him (Poe) in 
Baltimore in a state of starvation. I gave him 
clothing, free access to my table, and the use 
of a horse for exercise whenever he chose — in 
fact, brought him up from the very verge of de- 
spair." 

While in Baltimore he was awarded a hun- 
dred-dollar prize for a story, and later Kennedy 

(61 j 



62 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

secured for him' the position of editor of the 
Southern Literary Messenger, at Richmond, Va. 
In that position he made considerable reputation 
and a number of enemies, on account of his fear- 
less and caustic criticisms. He soon placed the 
Messenger beside the Knickerbocker and the New 
JEnglander. 

He married at the age of twenty- seven, and 
was making a modest living in Richmond, when 
his love for intoxicants lost him his position. 
He drifted to Philadelphia, and became associate 
editor of the Gentleman: } s Magazine. During his 
residence there he issued a collection of his prose 
stories, his best work, receiving nothing from 
his publisher but twenty copies of the work for 
distribution among his friends. 

It is said that Lockhart, the English writer, 
never kept a friend. Poe was almost as unfor- 
tunate. He quarreled with the editor of the Gen- 
tleman's Magazine, and became editor of Gra- 
ham's; but in 1844 he went to New York, and 
became connected with the Mirror. In this pa- 
per, in 1845, first appeared "The Raven." Its 
popularity was immediate and widespread, and 
has not diminished to the present. Not liking 
the grind of daily newspaper work, he connect- 
ed himself with the Broadway Journal. His 
harsh criticism of Longfellow was a feature of 
his work on the Journal. Authors are often 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 63 

jealous, and they also see the advantage of con- 
tinuous advertising. Poe always republished 
references commendatory of himself, and had his 
friends see to their republication. He even cor- 
rected the proof of Lowell's article regarding his 
work. It is probable that literary rivalry caused 
him to attack Longfellow. The latter had edited 
the Waif, a volume containing fugitive pieces 
by minor authors. Reviewing it, Poe said: 
"But there does appear in this little volume a 
very careful avoidance of all American poets 
who may be supposed especially to interfere 
with the claims of Mr. Longfellow. These men 
Mr. Longfellow can continuously imitate (is 
that the word?), and yet never incidentally com- 
mend." 

The attack, it may well be supposed, lost him 
friends. Poe's intimates said that he was a 
monomaniac on the subject of plagiarism. 

Early in 1846 he removed to Fordham, a sub- 
urb of New York, where he and his wife and her 
mother lived in poverty. The domestic rela- 
tions of the three seemed to be pleasant, despite 
poverty, as this extract from a letter written to 
his mother-in-law after his removal to Philadel- 
phia indicates: "We have now got $4.50 left. 
To-morrow I am going to try to borrow $3, so 
that I may have a fortnight to go upon. I feel 
in excellent spirits, and haven't drunk a drop, 



64 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

so that I hope soon to get out of trouble. The 
very instant I scrape together enough money I 
shall send it on. You can't imagine how much 
we both miss you. It looks as if it were going 
to clear up now. As soon as I write Lowell's 
article I shall send it to you and get you to get 
the money from Graham." 

While at Fordham his wife died; but, although 
this was a severe blow, he recovered in the sum- 
mer and lectured. He prepared for and took a 
Southern trip. Going to Richmond, he became 
engaged to a widow whom he had loved in 
youth. He then went to Baltimore, on his re- 
turn North, to make arrangements for his wed- 
ding; but, falling in with old friends and im- 
bibing freely, was one day found unconscious 
from the use of stimulants. He was carried to 
a hospital, and died there on Sunday, October 9 3 
1849. 

Poe's place in literature is established. He 
is one of the immortals. His fame continues to 
broaden year by year. While his poems point 
no moral and j^ossess few quotable lines, there 
is a haunting melancholy, a something in them 
that makes them admired. He was the first to 
write a detective story, as Irving has written the 
first American short stories. In the "Murders 
of the Rue Morgue" and the "Gold Bug" he 
has had imitators, but no rivals. "In the eyes 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 65 

of foreigners," avers an American critic, "he is 
the most gifted of all the authors of America. 
He is the one to whom the critics of Europe 
would most readily accord the full title of gen- 
ius. At the end of this nineteenth century Poe 
is the sole man of letters born in the United 
States whose writings are read eagerly in Great 
Britain and in France; in Germany, in Italy, 
and in Spain, where Franklin is now but a name 
and where the fame of James Fenimore Cooper, 
once as widely spread is now slowly fading 
away." 
5 



HENRY CLAY. 




It is a fact that no man 
who has been an unusual- 
ly powerful orator has 
ever been elevated to the 
Presidency. Clay, Web- 
ster, and Calhoun could 
sway multitudes, but nev- 
er, for some reason, be- 
came popular enough to 
reach the position of Pres- 
ident of the United States. 
It may be that Henry Clay's very ardency for 
the Union prevented his elevation beyond the 
United States Senate. His anxiety to keep it 
intact inspired his disposition to compromise 
contested questions to a much greater extent 
than any man who had gone before him, and 
the public might have construed this into inde- 
cision and lack of principle. 

Clay's first public actions were in favor of the 
emancipation of slavery, soon after his removal 
from Virginia to Kentucky, but he advocated a 
constitutional provision for the gradual freeing 
cf the slaves of his adopted State. This meas- 
ure was cherished until the end of his life; and, 
(66) 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 67 

though it wag not popular in the South, it might 
have been well if that section had listened to his 
arguments on the subject with more patience. 

While of the South, it is thus seen that he 
was not in sympathy with one of the institutions 
more particularly upheld by Southerners; but in 
his opposition to it he was careful not to allow 
his dislike of it to contribute in any manner to 
the estrangement of the sections. His course in 
the great controversy substantiates this idea. 

When the question of the admission of Mis- 
souri as a slave State came up it created the first 
intense political slavery excitement. A biogra- 
pher says that Clay "opposed the 'restriction' 
clause making the admission of Missouri depend- 
ent on the exclusion of slavery from the State, 
but supported the compromise by Senator Thom- 
as, of Illinois, admitting Missouri with slavery, 
but excluding slavery from all the territory north 
of 36° 30' acquired by the Louisiana purchase. 
This was the first part of the Missouri Compro- 
mise, which is often erroneously attributed to 
Clay. When Missouri then presented herself 
with a State constitution not only recognizing 
slavery, but also making it the duty of the Legis- 
lature to pass such laws as would prevent free 
negroes or mulattoes from coming into the State, 
the excitement broke out anew, and a majority in 
the House of Representatives refused to admit 



68 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

Missouri as a State with such a constitution. On 
Clay's motion, the subject was referred to a spe- 
cial committee, of which he was chairman. This 
committee of the House joined with a Senate 
committee, and the two unitedly reported in 
both houses a resolution that Missouri be admit- 
ted upon the fundamental condition that the 
State should never make any law to prevent from 
settling within its boundaries any description of 
persons who then or thereafter might become 
citizens of any State of the Union. This reso- 
lution was adopted, and the fundamental condi- 
tion assented to by Missouri." This was Clay's 
part in the Missouri Compromise. It caused 
him to be heralded as the "great pacificator," 
and he proved himself on other occasions enti- 
tled to the distinction. For instance, when 
South Carolina passed an ordinance nullifying 
the tariff laws, and when in 1832 President Jack- 
son issued a proclamation against the nullifiers, 
he introduced in behalf of peace and union a 
compromise bill in Congress providing for a 
gradual reduction of the tariff until 1842, when 
it should be reduced to a "horizontal rate" of 
twenty per cent. The bill became a law, was 
accepted by the nullifiers, and South Carolina 
rescinded the objectionable ordinance. 

When defeated first for the Presidency, and 
the election was left to the House of Representa- 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 69 

tives, he supported John Quincy Adams in pref- 
erence to his other competitors, Jackson and 
Crawford, and was charged with selling out to 
Adams. The charge was thrown at Clay ever 
after. It had no foundation in fact, but Jack- 
son believed it, and, with such a one to circulate 
the charge, it must have been something of a 
millstone about Clay's neck. He was made Sec- 
retary of State under Adams. John Randolph, 
referring to Adams and Clay, once said that they 
were a "combination of Puritan and blackleg," 
which indicates the fierceness of party feeling at 
that time. It caused Clay to challenge Randolph 
to a duel, but neither was wounded. 

By 1848 Clay was convinced that his chance 
to realize the ambition of his life, that of being 
President of the United States, had passed; but 
he was not yet allowed to retire to private walks. 
When new territory was acquired from Mexico 
he was once more successful in compromising 
differences between the sections on the slavery 
question. Abolitionism, which began to take 
shape during Jackson's administration, kept alive 
in Clay's bosom the dread of secession, which he 
had foreseen, and its followers disgusted him. 
Leading people of the North, who had hated 
with such intensity the nullification doctrine of 
John C. Calhoun and South Carolina, were them- 
selves nullifying a law of the land relative to 



70 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

fugitive slaves. When captured in Northern 
States these escaped slaves, the property of the 
Southern people, were liberated. Northern peo- 
ple, many of them, were so hostile to a part of 
the Union that they afterwards expressed them- 
selves in sympathy with John Brown, the would- 
be butcher of Virginia slaveholders. So com- 
mon had nullification outrages become in the 
North that Clay, in 1851, pronounced himself 
in favor of conferring upon the President ex- 
traordinary powers for the enforcement of the 
fugitive slave law. 

In a biography of the Kentucky orator Carl 
Schurz says: "Clay was unquestionably one of 
the greatest orators that America ever produced 
■ — a man of incorruptible personal integrity; of 
very great natural ability, but little study; of 
free and convivial habits; of singularly winning 
address and manners; not a cautious and safe 
political leader, but a splendid party chief, idol- 
ized by his followers. He was actuated by a 
lofty national spirit, proud of his country, and 
ardently devoted to the Union." 



JOHN C. CALHOUN. 




When John C. Cal- 
houn, of South Caroli- 
na, died in 1850, Daniel 
Webster, of Massachu- 
setts, said among other 
things: "He had the ba- 
sis, the indispensable ba- 
sis, of all high character, 
and that was unspotted 
integrity and unimpaired 
honor. If he had aspira- 
tions, they were high and honorable and noble. 
Firm in his purpose, perfectly patriotic and hon- 
est, aside from that large regard for that species 
of distinction that conducted him to eminent sta- 
tions for the benefit of the republic, I do not be- 
lieve he had a selfish motive or a selfish feeling." 

In strange contrast with this praise from a po- 
litical adversary is the assault on the public acts 
of Calhoun by Dr. H. Von Hoist, in one of the 
latest biographies of the Southerner. We know 
who Webster was, and what his esteem meant; 
but what of Von Hoist? In a sketch of him, in 
Warner's "Library of the World's Best Litera- 
ture," it is shown that he is an alien, while this 

(71) 



72 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

statement is made as to his judgment: "Un- 
fortunately for his repute as a historian, he saw 
these causes (leading to the civil war) with the 
eye of a partisan of the North, and he traversed 
the past like a belated Nemesis dealing out to 
our departed statesmen the retribution which he 
thought their sins deserved. " Happily, our opin- 
ions are not often formed from those of mere 
literary tinkers. 

John C. Calhoun is known to fame because of 
his power as an orator; because of his analytical 
mind, his acquaintance with constitutional law, 
his high statesmanship; and because of his une- 
quivocal indorsement of "nullification" and the 
disturbances that doctrine caused in the affairs of 
this country in the earlier part of the nineteenth 
century. 

Of this doctrine of nullification, or the princi- 
ple of State interposition with laws of the gen- 
eral government that are unconstitutional and 
tending to injure the State, he is supposed to 
have been the originator. He was not, how- 
ever; he was only its ablest champion. The war 
between the States settled the question, but the 
idea was not new either North or South before 
he gave it his tremendous influence. 

While serving his first term as Vice President 
of the United States Calhoun's life as a constitu- 
tional statesman began in his opposition to the 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 73 

"American policy" of Henry Clay. He founded 
a new school of political philosophy, the tenets 
being free trade, low duties, separation from 
banks, nullification, and a strict adherence to 
the Constitution. While the Democratic party, 
led by Andrew Jackson, and the Whig party, 
under the leadership of Clay, were organized 
for a battle for supremacy, the South Carolinian 
represented the position of his State against the 
tariff. In the Senate his temerity in advocating 
nullification when all others opposed it caused 
him to be regarded not only with interest but 
hostility. In this attitude he certainly demon- 
strated the truth of an assertion he once made: 
"Throughout the whole of my service I have 
never followed events, but have taken my stand 
in advance." He was not a mere politician who 
watched the straws to learn the course of the 
wind, and there are not many instances of such 
great moral courage as that of Calhoun standing 
there in the Senate demanding what he thought 
was right, undaunted and eloquent, and giving 
up the hope of the highest office in the land in 
the sincerity of his convictions. 

The President's proclamation of November, 
1832, relative to the ordinance of South Caro- 
lina to nullify the tariff law, was followed by 
the force bill and Jackson's threat against South 
Carolina. Calhoun made a forceful speech 



74 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

against this bill; Webster replied. Calhoun 
then called up his resolutions and made, on 
February 26, 1833, a speech of extraordinary 
power; Webster did not reply. The heated 
discussion resulted in good, giving Clay an op- 
portunity to introduce his famous compromise 
tariff. 

Like Patrick Henry, he made some startling 
predictions relative to abolitionism and on the 
subject of the slaves. In 1849 he said: "If it 
[emancipation] should ever be effected, it will 
be through the agency of the Federal govern- 
ment, controlled by the dominant power of the 
Northern States of the confederacy against the 
resistance and struggle of the Southern. " Again: 
"Another step would be taken, to raise them to 
a political and social equality with their [the 
slaves'] former owners by giving them the right 
of voting and holding public offices under the 
Federal government. " And again : ' ' The blacks 
and the profligate whites who might unite with 
them would become the principal recipients of 
Federal offices and patronage, and would in con- 
sequence be raised above the whites in the South 
in her political and social scale." 

Even Yon Hoist admits that Calhoun's repu- 
tation is growing, while Webster and Clay are 
gradually receding. 



JOHN RANDOLPH. 




In honor and distinc- 
tion the name of Ran- 
dolph vies with that of 
Lee in Virginia. Mem- 
bers of the family have 
been Governors, soldiers, 
jurists, and Congressmen. 
John Randolph, of Roan- 
oke, is perhaps the most 
famous, and by his ca- 
reer — illustrious in some 
respects and bizarre in many — has added a cer- 
tain prestige to the name that it would probably 
not have had. Historians have been divided in 
their estimate. Henry Adams, in the "American 
Statesmen Series," writes of him much as he 
would of a personal enemy; Hugh Garland, in 
his " Life," says he was the wisest, truest patriot 
and most devoted son Virginia has ever had. 
Both are extreme in their views. 

Randolph was born June 2, 1773, and was the 
seventh in descent from the Indian woman Po- 
cahontas by her marriage with John Rolfe. It 
was held that toward the close of his life he 
showed symptoms of insanity, and from child- 

(75) 



76 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

hood he was eccentric. He did not mingle easi- 
ly with other boys, but attached himself vehe- 
mently, it is said, to one or two. His escapades 
at college recall the vices of the poet Poe. He 
drank and gambled, and was mixed up in a sen- 
sational affair with the famous beauty of that 
time, Maria Ward. 

He was elected to Congress, and his first speech 
in that body, in 1800, made him a number of en- 
emies among certain officers; for it was upon a 
resolution to diminish the army, and he used the 
phrase "standing or mercenary armies," contend- 
ing that those who made war a special calling 
were mercenary. They insulted him at the the- 
ater afterwards. 

It is mentioned as a fact that Jefferson consid- 
ered "Mr." a sufficiently honorable title as could 
be given a person. Randolph, in writing to 
President Adams regarding the officers' insults 
at the theater, addressed him only as "Presi- 
dent of the United States," and signed himself: 
"With respect, your fellow- citizen, John Ran- 
dolph." This was a mere instance of his eccen- 
tricity, it may be, and it greatly incensed the 
President. But he had little respect for the 
prominent men of his day. He generally spoke 
of Bonaparte as "that coward Napoleon." While 
he hated slavery, he referred to those who fa- 
vored the Missouri compromise as "doughfaces," 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 



a term he originated. He had no esteem for Cal- 
houn, the nullification* champion, though he gave 
up the mission to Russia to oppose Jackson's war 
on nullification; and he referred to Clay as a 
"blackleg." For his epithet- throwing at Clay- 
he was challenged and shot at by the Kentuckian, 
but refused to kill Clay when it was manifestly 
in his power to do so. 

Awhile after entering the halls of Congress 
he became the leader of the Republicans in the 
House and the pride of his State. "He com- 
manded the heart of the nation by his poetic el- 
oquence, his absolute honesty, and the scath- 
ing wit with which he exposed every corrupt 
scheme," says M. D. Conway. These speeches 
were never forgotten by those who heard them, 
for, besides his bursts of eloquence, he had a 
striking personal appearance, being six feet in 
height and very slender, with long, skinny fin- 
gers, which he pointed and shook at those against 
whom he spoke. 

There was no great measure of national im- 
portance, like Thomas H. Benton's homestead 
scheme, conceived and pushed by him, but he 
gave his best energies to the advocation of State 
rights and to obstruct certain unwise, if not cor- 
rupt, legislation. 

Through his high temper, his love of invec- 
tive, of which he was a master, and his intol- 



78 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

erance, he made as many enemies as any other 
public man of his day, not excepting Andrew 
Jackson; and each quarrel, because generally 
unreasonable in its inception and intensity, tend- 
ed to lose him influence. When he at last quar- 
reled with Monroe while that gentleman was 
on a rising wave and lost his seat in Congress, 
the Richmond Enquirer denounced him as "a 
nuisance and a curse." This was in 1813; and a 
Senator from Massachusetts, writing in 1825, 
declared: "In his likings and dislikings, as in 
everything else, he is the most eccentric being 
on the face of the earth, and is as likely to abuse 
friend as foe. Hence, among all those with 
whom he has been associated during the last 
thirty years, there is scarcely an individual whom 
he can call his friend. Indeed, I think he is par- 
tially deranged, and seldom in the full possession 
of his reason." 

Randolph would stoop even to make war on 
his neighbors if they dared to vote against him. 
As an instance of how he would seek revenge in 
such matters the following is related: A plain 
farmer, in 1813, had carried his district almost 
solidly against Randolph in the Congressional 
election. He was sought out one court day by 
Randolph in the most public place he could find. 
Addressing him with great courtesy, he put to 
him presently an abstruse question of politics. 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS 79 

Passing from one puzzling and confusing in- 
quiry to another, raising his voice, attracting a 
crowd by every artifice in his power, he drew the 
unfortunate man farther into the most awkward 
embarrassment, continually repeating his expres- 
sions of astonishment at the ignorance to which 
his victim confessed. The scene exposed the 
man to ridicule and contempt and destroyed his 
influence. 

But although Randolph was what we for con- 
venience term "unbalanced," he was yet so great 
as an orator, so formidable an opponent of what 
he considered a wrong principle, that we won- 
der what he might have been had he possessed 
the self-control of such a man as Patrick Henry. 
In the House of Representatives and in the Sen- 
ate he was a power, and if he really introduced 
no great measure he did the country considera- 
ble service more than once in balking corrup- 
tion. 

In combativeness he was like Andrew Jack- 
son; in moroseness, caused by disease and tem- 
per, and in the vigor of his style, he recalls Car- 
lyle; and Swift is thought of when we advert to 
his giant and crumbling intellect in his declin- 
ing years. 

Randolph appeared to abhor slavery, and it is 
said that if it would not have done an injustice 
to his creditors he would have freed his slaves 



80 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

before his death. As it was, by an early will 
they were freed and then colonized in the West. 
His last will was set aside as having been written 
while of unsound mind. He died of consumption 
at the age of sixty years. In closing his biogra- 
phy Clark avers that the reason why funeral 
bells were not tolled, and eulogies pronounced, 
and a monument was not erected to his memory 
in the capital of his native State, was because her 
people had not yet learned to understand and ap- 
preciate him. 

It may be that Randolph was the victim of 
ungoverned passions only, and in that case his 
career emphasizes the fact that he who practices 
self-control possesses a wisdom not found in 
books. 




ROBERT Y. HAYNE, 

The Hayne family of 
South Carolina is a very 
distinguished one, dating 
back long before the 
Revolution. It came 
prominently into nation- 
al notice on account of 
the execution of Isaac 
Hayne by the British in 
1781, an execution that 
brought shame on Eng- 
lish justice, but placed the unfortunate victim 
among the immortals of American annals as 
similar executions rendered famous Nathan 
Hale of the same period, and Sam Davis of the 
Confederate army. 

This victim of British hate was a wealthy 
planter and owner of iron works in South Caro- 
lina. At the outbreak of the war between the 
colonies and England he took the field for inde- 
pendence as a captain. At the same time he 
was a State Senator. In 1780, on the invasion 
of the State by the English, he was included in 
the capitulation of Charleston, and paroled on 
condition that he would not serve against the 
6 (81) 



82 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

enemy so long as they held possession. When 
a few months later the fortunes of the British 
declined, he, with others who were paroled on 
the same terms, was warned that he would be 
compelled to join the British army or be closely 
confined. He would have accepted confinement, 
but his wife and several children lay at the point 
of death of smallpox. He went to Charleston, 
and, being assured by the deputy British com- 
mandant that he would not be compelled to 
fight against his countrymen, he took the oath 
of allegiance. After Gen. Greene had left the 
enemy nothing but Charleston Hayne was sum- 
moned to join the royal army immediately. 
This being in violation of the agreement that 
had been made, it released him from all ob- 
ligations to the British. He rejoined the 
American army. In course of time he was cap- 
tured, put in prison, and after examination be- 
fore a board of officers, without trial or examina- 
tion of witnesses, was sentenced to be hanged by 
the joint orders of Col. Balfour and Lord Raw- 
don. He protested against this summary pro- 
ceeding, which was illegal whether he was re- 
garded as a British subject or a prisoner who 
had broken his parole. Citizens of Charleston 
petitioned for his pardon in vain. A respite of 
forty-eight hours was allowed him in which to 
take leave of his children (his wife had died), 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 83 

and at the end of that time he was hanged. 
Gen. Greene issued a proclamation that he 
would make reprisals. The matter was discussed 
in the British Parliament, and, while both Bal- 
four and Rawdon justified it, each tried to at- 
tribute it to the agency of the other. 

His great nephew, Robert Y. Hayne, is the 
subject of this sketch. This statesman and ora- 
tor was born in South Carolina in 1791. He 
was educated for the bar at Charleston, and 
proved successful from the start. After the war 
of 1812, in which he took part, he resumed the 
practice of his profession in Charleston. He 
became attorney-general of the State, and in 
1823 was elected to the United States Senate, 
where he took rank with Benton, Calhoun, Web- 
ster, and Clay. Few men have made such a 
profound an impression on that body in so short 
a time at so early an age, and his ability was 
recognized from the fact that he was placed on 
some of the most important committees. 

He took an important part in the discussion 
of the questions coming before the Senate, such 
as the tariff, etc. When the tariff bill of 1829 
was before that body he made an elaborate and 
powerful speech, asserting that Congress did 
not have the constitutional power to impose du- 
ties on imports for the purpose of protecting 
domestic manufacturers. He was perhaps the 



84 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

first to announce on the floor the doctrine of 
nullification — the right of a State to annul a 
law of the general government if that law was 
against the State's interest, the State to decide 
on that point in convention. 

In 1830 the celebrated Foote resolutions on 
the sale of public lands were introduced, 
and this brought out the great debate between 
Hayne and Webster. The public at the time 
was familiar with the arguments made by them, 
but the speech of Hayne is not so familiar to 
the present generation as Webster's. The lat- 
ter's life has been written time and again by 
partial historians, while Hayne has been neg- 
lected. Our histories, especially the school his- 
tories, are from a Northern source, and their 
authors have praised and paraded the effort 
which had their sympathies. In this way 
Hayne's speech has been hidden. None can 
discount its merits as a great speech, and will 
not attempt to refute any of the arguments ex- 
cept those referring to nullification. If the un- 
biased student desires to read Hayne's effort, 
he must repair to a library and seek it in some 
old volume published half a century ago. Why 
has it been so persistently covered up? Is it 
not because it is unanswerable, because it is so 
damaging in its presentation of facts? The 
latest biographer of Webster says his reply to 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 85 

Hayne was the greatest speech of his life; he 
never afterwards equaled it. If this is so, if 
Webster perceived that all his power was neces- 
sary to reply properly to Hayne, must we not 
concede that Hayne' s speech was a strong one? 
Thoughtful people will agree to this, though 
they have no old volume of "American Elo- 
quence" to refer to and read it. In his defense 
of John Smith of the world and Virginia, John 
Fiske says logically: "To this day John Smith 
is one of the personages about whom writers of 
history are apt to lose their tempers. In recent 
days there have been many attempts to belittle 
him, but the turmoil that has been made is it- 
self a tribute to the potency and incisiveness of 
his character. Weak men do not call forth 
such belligerency." An insignificant speech 
does not call forth the greatest effort of the 
greatest orator of one of the two sections of the 
Union; a speech that is not strong in argument, 
that is lacking in damaging facts, and that is 
not impressive and persuasive by reason of its 
eloquence, should not be so studiously kept 
from sight. 

There is no discounting the ability of Web- 
ster. He is the pride of every American. But 
Hayne was an American statesman also, and the 
same generous veneration should be accorded 
his powers. After looking into the face of 



86 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

Webster once, Carlyle said (Carlyle was imagi- 
native, and liked to say impressive things) : " X 
have not traced so much silent Berserker rage 
that I remember in any man." But contempo- 
raries said as fine things of Hayne — this, for- in- 
stance: "His voice is full and melodious, and 
his manner earnest and impressive. Full of in- 
genious sensibility, his eyes are as expressive as 
his tongue, and as he pours out his thoughts or 
feeling, either in a strain of captivating sweet- 
ness or of impetuous and overbearing passion, 
every emotion of his soul is distinctly depicted 
in the lineaments of his countenance. When he 
does not convince he delights, and even preju- 
dice itself hangs charmed upon his lips." 

When these men debated, in 1830, Hayne was 
only thirty - nine and Webster forty - eight. 
Both speeches were masterful, each satisfying 
those for whom it was made. Hayne's friends 
had as much to be proud over as Webster's. 

"To do good by fair means," says the great 
Thomas H. Benton, referring to Robert Y. 
Hayne, "was the labor of his senatorial life; 
and I can truly say that, in ten years of close 
association with him, I never saw him actuated 
by a sinister motive, a selfish calculation, or an 
unbecoming aspiration. " 

It is here conceded that the literary part of 
the North has of recent years been generally ap- 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 87 

preciative of Southern genius. If it had been 
otherwise, many a Southern author now enjoy- 
ing an international reputation would have re- 
mained unknown. The South appreciates this. 
But secession is no more an issue; nullification 
is a dead- and- gone doctrine. It can do no harm 
to render justice to Hayne's speech and career. 



THOMAS H, BENTON. 




j 



As civil strife is gen- 
erally the most bitter of 
all wars, so when inti- 
mate friends become es- 
tranged they seldom be- 
come as readily recon- 
ciled as those who have 
no memories of favors 
done or thoughts of in- 
gratitude. Thomas H. 
m Benton and Andrew 

Jackson were both adopted sons of Tennessee, 
and the former was the aid-de-camp of the latter 
in the war of 1812. They became estranged, 
however, and were bitter enemies for years; but 
after a time they made friends, and Benton 
proved his friendship sincere in various ways — a 
fact worthy of record, since it is an exception, 
and because Jackson seldom made friends with 
those he had once learned to hate. 

In 1815 Benton left Tennessee and took up his 
residence in St. Louis, Mo., and resumed the 
practice of law. He also published a newspaper 
there, which involved him in several duels. He 
was one of the earliest Senators from Missouri 
(88) 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 89 

after its admission into the Union. He soon 
placed himself among the leaders, and was in 
his day considered one of the greatest orators. 

Being a pioneer, he began early to secure a re- 
form in the disposition of government lands to 
settlers. He demanded a preemptive right to all 
actual settlers and the donation of homesteads 
to impoverished but industrious persons who 
would cultivate the land for a specified number 
of years. This was something new, and the 
public was slow to appreciate its merits, but he 
renewed the demand every year until it took 
hold on the public, and President Jackson em- 
bodied it in one of his messages, which secured 
its passage as a law. This was the origin of our 
great homestead preemption law. Every settler 
in the West regarded him as a personal friend for 
the measure. He and Jackson had before this 
renewed their friendship. 

Benton was one of the earliest advocates for a 
railroad to the Pacific. He favored the opening 
up and protection of the trade with New Mexico, 
and urged the cultivation of amicable relations 
with the Indian tribes. 

President Jackson, as has been shown, took 
strong grounds against the United States Bank. 
He was supported by Benton, who took up the 
whole question of finance and urged a gold and 
silver currency as the true remedy for existing 



90 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

financial embarrassments. The most elaborate 
speeches of his life were made on the subject, 
and not only attracted profound attention in his 
own country but also throughout Europe, and 
he won the title of "Old Bullion." His style 
of oratory then was unimpassioned, but very de- 
liberate, overflowing with facts and figures; but 
later in life he displayed exuberance of wit and 
raciness that added a charm to what he said. 

During Benton's career there occurred an event 
which is not generally known in history. Owing 
to circumstances, David R. Atchison was ele- 
vated to Congress from Missouri. The Govern- 
or, who appointed him to fill out the unexpired 
term of Senator Lewis F. Linn, afterwards com- 
mitted suicide because of the criticisms heaped 
upon him for the appointment of the unpopular 
Atchison. The latter felt himself overshadowed 
by Benton's reputation and chafed over it, al- 
though his position brought him the distinction 
of being President of the United States for one 
day. Under this shadow and that attending the 
Governor's death he continued to the end of his 
public life, although he was reelected at the ex- 
piration of his first term. He antagonized Ben- 
ton in the latter's "appeal" from the Jackson 
resolutions in 1848, and this inaugurated a war- 
fare which finally resulted in the retirement from 
the Senate of both Benton and Atchison. 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 91 

It was during his service in the Senate that 
ocurred the incident in Atchison's career which 
made him a unique figure in American history. 
He was at one time elected President pro tern. 
of that body, and frequently presided over its 
deliberations. It so happened that March 4, 
1849, fell on Sunday. The term of President 
Polk expired, according to law and custom, at 
noon on that day. Gen. Zachary Taylor, hero 
of the Mexican war, j ust then ended, out of def- 
erence to prevailing religious scruples decided to 
defer his inauguration until Monday. As will 
be seen, this left a gap of twenty-four hours be- 
tween the terms of Polk and Taylor. As the 
Vice President's term ended at the same time as 
the President's, the mantle of authority fell, ac- 
cording to constitutional provision, upon the 
President pro tern, of the Senate. This hap- 
pened to be at that particular time David Rice 
Atchison, of Missouri; but Senator Atchison 
seems to have little appreciated the honor con- 
ferred upon him by chance. On Saturday, the 
last day of the expiring Congress, he presided 
over the stormy and prolonged sitting of the 
Senate. Again and again was the clock "set 
back," in deference to that ancient and amusing 
fiction of law, and it was nearly daylight Sunday 
•morning before the gavel finally fell. Exhaust- 
ed by his unusual and worrisome labors, Atchi- 



92 GREAT SOUTHERNERS, 

repaired to his lodgings and went to bed. He 
slept until late in the evening, and then, after 
rising for a meal, turned in for the remainder of 
the night. By the time he was up and about on 
Monday Gen. Taylor had become President Tay- 
lor, and President Atchison's brief term was 
over. He afterwards often laughingly remarked 
that he had slept through his term. Had it been 
necessary to secure the action of the President 
of the United States during these twenty-four 
hours, there would have been a pretty search for 
the legal chief executive. It happened, howev- 
er, that no matter required the attention of the 
President that Sunday, and Atchison's term came 
and went without the performance of a single of- 
ficial action by him. 

During the excitement over President Jack- 
son's rather high-handed dealing with the Unit- 
ed Stated States Bank a formidable combination 
had been formed in the Senate by Clay, Y^eb- 
ster, and Calhoun, and resolutions condemning 
Jackson's course were adopted. Benton as- 
sumed the task of having the resolutions of cen- 
sure expunged. This, after years, he succeeded 
in doing. Though often defeated in his efforts, 
he continued the struggle, with the result stated. 
"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man 
lay down his life for his friends." While Ben-. 
ton's life was not given for his former bitter en- 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 93 

emy, much of his best efforts were, and through 
the turmoil of those years the incident stands out 
beautifully, like the story of David and Jona- 
than. 

In the nullification struggle Benton was one 
of Calhoun's most formidable opponents, and 
this opposition resulted in a lifelong animosity. 

In the Presidential election of 1856 he sup- 
ported James Buchanan in opposition to his own 
son-in-law, Col. Fremont, giving as a reason that 
he feared the success of Fremont would engen- 
der sectional prejudices that would endanger the 
Union. 

He wrote a very valuable book, his "Thirty 
Years' View," which deals with the political his- 
tory of his official life. He also published "An 
Abridgment of the Debates of Congress," in fif- 
teen volumes. 



SAM HOUSTON. 




Iisr spite of the idea be- 
ginning to prevail that 
sentiment no longer has 
much to do in this age of 
business and push, senti- 
ment is still the gulf 
stream that warms hu- 
manity. A story of the 
heart in connection with 
a distinguished person's 
life adds much to its in- 
terest. When we think of Petrarch, it is not so 
much because of his literary achievements as it 
is for the romance connecting him with Laura, 
"the Provence rose." However we may esteem 
James Buchanan as a statesman, we are inclined 
to draw nearer to him on account of the love af- 
fair that caused him to go through life unwedded. 
And the unhappy marriage of Sam Houston 
when Governor of the State of Tennessee will 
always be the center of interest in his career, 
notwithstanding the fact that he was one of the 
most prominent Americans in the public eye for 
some years. 

He, like so many of the distinguished men of 
(94) 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 95 

the South before the great civil war, was a native 
of Virginia, and was of Scotch-Irish descent. 
On the death of his father the family removed 
to a place in Tennessee near the territory of the 
Cherokee Indians, by one of whom he was final- 
ly adopted. He seemed to take a fancy to their 
mode of life. Later on, however, he left his In- 
dian friends, and, with David Crockett, was an 
officer under Jackson in the war of 1812. 

Going to Nashville, he began the study of 
law, and entered upon the practice at Lebanon. 
Genial and gifted, he rapidly grew in popular- 
ity. When thirty- seven years of age he was 
elected Governor of Tennessee, and then came 
the event which changed the course of his life: 
his marriage to a lady of the name of Allen, 
who lived in Sumner County. While his friends 
were yet congratulating him over his marriage, 
he separated from her without a word of explana- 
tion, resigned his office, and left the State amid 
a storm of abuse. The cause of the separation 
will perhaps always remain a mystery, as nei- 
ther party ever made known the reason, though 
Houston protested that it in no wise affected his 
wife's honor. 

Houston made his way up the Arkansas River 
to where his Cherokee friends had migrated, and 
rejoined them. Here he remained three years, 
living and dressing like the savages. In 1832 he 



96 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

made a journey to Washington in behalf of the 
Indians, and was warmly received by President 
Jackson; and he created no little interest among 
the populace when it became known that an ex- 
Governor, who had discarded civilization under 
such peculiar circumstances, was visiting the city 
in the picturesque Indian garb. 

It is natural to suppose that his domestic 
troubles had rendered Houston discontented in 
a degree. They may have been stepping stones. 
He went to Texas and took part in its struggle 
for independence from Mexican control. As in 
Tennessee, he at once became popular. In 1836, 
when Texas adopted a resolution of absolute in- 
dependence, he was made commander in chief of 
the army. 

In the meantime the Mexicans under Santa 
Anna began the invasion of Texas with a force 
of five thousand soldiers, in three columns. The 
Alamo fell, and the gallant Texan defenders 
were butchered. A few days later Goilad was 
taken by the Mexicans. But Houston turned 
the tide. He met the main division of the Mex- 
icans under Santa Anna, and almost destroyed it, 
capturing Santa Anna himself. Texas became a 
republic, and Houston was its first President. 

After a while the Texas Congress passed a bill 
making him Dictator. As President, he vetoed 
it. As early as 1838 he had taken the first steps 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 97 

toward the annexation of Texas to the United 
States. Van Buren was President, and hesi- 
tated to entertain the measure. Houston "co- 
quetted" with Spain, France, and England, 
knowing that the United States opposed the in- 
trusion of a European power upon American 
soil. Texas was finally admitted into the Union, 
and Houston became a member of the United 
States Senate. He was spoken of more than 
once as a candidate for the Presidency of the 
United States. 

In 1840, having long been divorced from his 
first wife, he married Margaret Moffette. He 
died in Huntsville, Tex., in 1863. 
7 




WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON. 



The two generals who 
won the greatest reputa- 
tions during the war of 
1812 were both Southern- 
ers, were Indian fighters, 
and both reached the 
highest offices within the 
gift of the American 
people. They were An- 
drew. Jackson and Wil- 
liam Henry Harrison. 
Unlike Jackson, Harrison came of a family of 
some prominence. His father was said to have 
descended from Harrison the regicide, though 
doubtless this is erroneous. He was a signer 
of the Declaration of Independence, was twice 
Governor of Virginia, and was long prominent 
in the State politically. 

The son was born in Berkeley, Va., in 1773. 
After beginning the study of medicine, he gave 
it up and entered the army in defense of the 
Western frontiers, which were being annoyed 
by the Indians. Washington, who had been a 
friend of his father, approved of his course, 
and he was commissioned ensign in the First 
(98) 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 99 

Infantry in 1791. For his services soon after 
entering the army he was especially compliment- 
ed by Gen. Wayne, and promotion followed. 

When Indiana was formed into a territory he 
was made its Governor, and was reappointed to 
that office successively by Jefferson and Madison. 
In 1805 he organized the first Indiana Legisla- 
ture. 

He was often brought in contact with the 
celebrated Indian chief Tecumseh in peace and 
war. Camping at Tippecanoe — near the Indian 
town where that chief and his brother, the 
Prophet, resided — and having been sent against 
the tribes on the Wabash, he was attacked at 
four o'clock on the morning of November 7, 
1811. The camp was vigorously assaulted; the 
issue was doubtful for some time. Finally the 
Indians were repulsed. To this victory the 
words of the campaign song of 1840, "Tippeca- 
noe and Tyler too," had reference. Harrison's 
loss was sixty-two killed and one hundred and 
twenty-six wounded. He destroyed the prophet's 
town and returned to Vincennes. Under the war 
spirit excited, Congress voted an increase to the 
regular army of thirty-five thousand men and 
authorized the President to accept the services of 
fifty thousand volunteers. - 

On June 18, 1812, war was declared between 
Great Britain and this country; and in August 

LofC. 



100 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

Harrison, though the Governor of Indiana, was 
commissioned major general of the militia of 
Kentucky. Some weeks subsequently an ex- 
press from the Secretary of War, appointing 
him to the chief command in the West, was re- 
ceived. The letter contained the words: "You 
will exercise your own discretion and in all 
cases act according to your own judgment," no 
such latitude having been given to any general 
since Washington. 

He proceeded to erect forts, and passed the 
year preparing for the coming campaign. Aft- 
er establishing a fortified camp, which he named 
Fort Meigs, he visited Cincinnati, and while 
there urged the construction of a fleet on Lake 
Erie. Early in 1813 Fort Meigs was besieged 
by the British under Proctor. The enemy was 
forced to retire, but in July renewed the attack. 
After a few days the British were again forced 
to withdraw. 

When, in September, Commodore Perry 
gained his great victory on Lake Erie, Harrison 
embarked his artillery for a descent on Canada, 
and the troops followed and landed on Canada's 
soil. Proctor burned the fort and navy yard at 
Maiden and retreated. He was overtaken by 
Harrison on October 5, and took position on the 
Thames. He was supported by Tecumseh and 
his Indians. It was at the battle of the Thames 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 101 

that Richard Mentor Johnson, afterwards Vice 
President, won considerable reputation, and 
Tecumseh lost his life. Proctor made the mis- 
take of forming the British in open order, the 
plan that was adopted in Indian fighting. Tak- 
ing advantage of the mistake, Harrison ordered 
Col. Johnson to lead a cavalry charge. The 
latter, with half his men, attacked the Indians; 
while his brother, with the remainder, attacked 
the British. They broke through the enemy's 
lines and ended the battle. Within five minutes 
a large part of the British were captured, Proc- 
tor escaping only by abandoning his carriage 
and fleeing to the woods. During the attack Col. 
Johnson killed an Indian chief whom he thought 
to be Tecumseh, while he himself received sev- 
eral wounds and was carried from the field al- 
most dead. Tecumseh was killed in the begin- 
ning of the fight, and there is little doubt that 
he was slain by Johnson. 

Though the number of men engaged in the 
battle of the Thames was inconsiderable, the re- 
sult was very important. With Commodore 
Perry's victory, it gave the Americans the pos- 
session of the lakes above Erie, and put an end 
to the war in Upper Canada. Harrison became 
one of the heroes of the day, and celebrations 
were held throughout the country in his honor. 
In 1814 he resigned, owing to a slight by the 



102 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

Secretary of War, and saw no further military 
service. 

After the war he was chosen to Congress. 
It was charged by his enemies, when a resolution 
was offered in Congress to have gold medals 
struck in honor of him and Col. Isaac Shelby, of 
Kentucky, for the victory of the Thames, that 
he would not have pursued Proctor after the 
British abandonment of Maiden if Gov. Shelby 
had not urged such a course. The latter denied 
this in a letter which was read before the Sen- 
ate. In 1818 Harrison received the medal, and 
continued to grow in popularity, notwithstand- 
ing all aspersions. 

In 1824 he was sent to the United States Sen- 
ate. In that body he succeeded Andrew Jack- 
son as Chairman of the Committee on Military 
Affairs. He was very active in endeavoring to 
obtain pensions for old soldiers. He resigned 
four years later to accept the appointment of 
Minister to Columbia; but at the outset of Jack- 
son's administration he was recalled at the in- 
stance of Gen. Simon Bolivar, to whom he had 
written a letter while Bolivar was exerting him- 
self for the South Americans, urging that pa- 
triot not to accept dictatorial powers. He re- 
tired to his farm near Cincinnati, becoming 
county court clerk and president of the agricul- 
tural society of the county. 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 103 

In 1835 he was nominated for the presidency 
by the opposition to Van Buren. The latter 
was elected. Four years later he became the 
candidate of the National Whigs for the same 
office, with John Tyler for Vice President. 
This canvass was one of the most exciting in 
American history up to that time, introducing 
the noisy mass meetings and processions so 
common since during presidential campaigns. 
It was called the log cabin and hard cider cam- 
paign. Harrison was elected by an overwhelm- 
ing majority over Van Buren, receiving two 
hundred and thirty- four electoral votes to the 
latter's sixty. On April 14, 1841, just one month 
after his inauguration, he died, John Tyler suc- 
ceeding to the presidency. 

In this hurrah election the Whigs really had 
no platform of principles. They merely hoped 
to get into office by opposing the administration 
of Van Buren, which had been very unsatisfac- 
tory. Harrison was really neutral in politics. 
Tyler was a Southern Democrat, and was nomi- 
nated because he represented the independent or 
anti-Jackson Democrats. 

President Harrison was a man of honor, and 
would have done his utmost for the entire coun- 
try if he had lived, 




JOHN TYLER. 

For some reason John 
Tyler is not now regarded 
generally as having been 
a strong man intellectual- 
ly and executively, but 
this idea is erroneous. He 
was an orator and states- 
man of more than average 
ability, while Calhoun did 
not possess more courage 
in support of the princi- 
ples he considered right. 

As a member of Congress he often had occa- 
sion to come in conflict with the views of An- 
drew Jackson, then becoming a power in politics; 
but later on, so free was he from prejudice, he 
did not hesitate to indorse the hero of New Or- 
leans for President in preference to Clay and 
Floyd. Like Jackson, he disapproved of South 
Carolina's attitude on the question of nullifica- 
tion; but at the same time he objected to Jack- 
son's famous proclamation of December 10, 1832, 
aimed against South Carolina, as a " tremendous 
engine of federalism," tending against the then 
cherished principle of State rights. These feel- 
(104) 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 105 

ings prompted him, while a member of the Unit. 
ed States Senate, to support Clay's compromise 
tariff, introduced in the Senate on February 12, 
1833. On the "force bill," clothing the President 
with extrordinary powers for the purpose of en- 
forcing .the tariff law, he gave an instance that 
he had the courage of his convictions. When 
the bill was put to vote some of its opponents 
were absent, and others went out in order to 
avoid placing themselves on record. The vote 
was taken, and stood: Yeas, 32; nay, 1. John 
Tyler voted nay. 

It was during Tyler's prominence that the most 
exciting election that had ever come off in the 
United States was held. There had been a 
"split" in the Democratic party, and Tyler was 
disaffected, and desired to see the overthrow of 
what he considered a tyrannical faction led by 
Jackson, Van Buren, and Thomas H. Benton. 
In the Whig convention of 1839 no platform of 
principles was adopted. William Henry Harri- 
son was nominated for President and Tyler for 
Vice President. The canvass was uproarious; 
there was little appeal to sober reason. Gen. 
Harrison was the hero of Tippecanoe, and the 
Whigs' "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" was yelled 
by them with as much enthusiasm as was Sam 
Houston's war cry of "Remember the Alamo!" 
They carried the election. 



106 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

Tyler became President on the death of Har- 
rison. His views were in almost every essential 
in conflict with those of the Whigs. As a con- 
sequence he soon found himself in "hot water," 
to use a common expression, while occupying 
the President's chair. Horace Greeley said of 
Jefferson Davis when the latter was Secretary of 
War: "He will not steal himself, and he will 
not permit any one else to steal." Tyler was as 
obdurate in the positions he took, so that those 
who had elected him Vice President began unre- 
lenting war on him. When such of their meas- 
ures as did not suit him were passed he prompt- 
ly vetoed them. They planned and implored 
and threatened. But he could not be bullied, 
hoodwinked, or bribed. On the passage of what 
was known as the "fiscal corporation bill," a 
provision to create a bank in the District of Co- 
lumbia, with branches throughout the United 
States, and not making a proper provision for 
the consent of the States, there was precipitated 
a problem that might have dismayed a less de- 
termined person. The bill was passed by the 
Senate September 4, 1841; it was vetoed Sep- 
tember 9; and on September 11 Thomas Ewing, 
Secretary of the Treasury; John Bell, Secretary 
of War; George E. Badger, Secretary of the 
Navy; John J. Crittenden, Attorney- General; 
and Francis Granger, Postmaster General, re- 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 107 

signed their positions. The adjournment of 
Congress had been fixed for September 13, and 
it was hoped that this and the resignation of his 
Cabinet — with the exception of Daniel Webster, 
Secretary of State — would force Tyler to give 
up. But he appointed a new Cabinet on the 
13th, and continued what the Whigs called "an 
unwarrantable assumption of power " in vetoing 
their pet measures. The wholesale resignation 
was intended to make the President resign. 

The latter part of Tyler's administration was 
taken up with the Ashburton treaty with Great 
Britain, the Oregon question, and the annexation 
of Texas. By the summer of 1844 the alliance 
between the Whigs and Tyler's wing of the Dem- 
ocratic party passed away, but he was never after- 
wards in favor with the Democracy. 

The last years of his life were spent at his 
home near Greenway, in his native State of Vir- 
ginia, and his last days were disturbed over the 
war between the States. He suggested and as- 
sisted in forming a peace convention after the 
secession of South Carolina. As a commissioner 
he waited on President Buchanan, but nothing 
came of the movement to preserve the Union 
peaceably. He did not wholly indorse seces- 
sion, but condemned coercion as unjustifiable. 
He was a member of the Provisional Congress 
of the Southern Confederacy. 



GEORGE F. PIERCE. 




If we except the pio- 
neers and missionaries, 
usually there is not that 
interest attaching to the 
preachers which attaches 
to the careers of states- 
men, warriors, and even 
literary men. That of 
George F. Pierce was 
one of the exceptions. 
He and his father were 
known throughout Methodism as "the two 
Pierces, father and son" — the former, Lovick 
Pierce, having been a well-known minister for 
the full number of years accorded man, and for 
half a century one of the leading lights in his 
denomination. 

The son was born in Georgia, and had fair 
advantages. The society in which his young 
years were passed was the best, a circumstance 
of no little importance in the formation of 
character, and he was often brought in contact 
with such men as Senator Thomas W. Cobb, 
Senator William C. Dawson, and Judge A. B. 
(108) 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 109 

Longstreet, author of the once- famous "Geor- 
gia Scenes." He was graduated before he 
reached his nineteenth year, and began the 
study of the law. This profession was not dis- 
tasteful to him, but he was impressed with the 
idea that he should preach, and it bore so 
heavily on his mind that he gave up Blackstone 
for the study of the Bible, and resolved to enter 
the ministry. 

Carlyle, the great English author and think- 
er, wrote a book on the philosophy of old 
clothes, and made more out of the subject than 
any one else could have done. The history of 
clothes, the extent to which they have figured 
in the world's affairs, would make a larger vol- 
ume than "Sartor Resartus." The early Meth- 
odists laid much stress on their wearing apparel. 
Rings, flounces, ruffles, all fashionable dress 
were denounced, it is true, and yet the Metho- 
dist preacher was partial to his straight-breasted 
coat and broad-brimmed hat. When young, 
Pierce found that his foppish way of dressing 
militated against his popularity as much as 
Bishop Marvin's plain garb afterwards militated 
against his. This was shown when he signified 
a desire to preach. The person in charge of 
this circuit was John Collinsworth, a man of 
iron, and he believed that a Methodist should 
show by every mark that he was not of the 



110 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

world. When told that Pierce, whose hair 
stood up on his forehead and did not, like his or 
Bishop Asbury's, lie down upon it, and who at- 
tended church in a suit of broadcloth with brass 
buttons, he was unalterably opposed to granting 
the license. The society, says his biographer, 
was to decide upon his fitness before the Quar- 
terly Conference could hear from the applica 
tion. The day of the Church session Collins- 
worth met him and said firmly but kindly: 
"George, these people want you to be rec- 
ommended for license, but if you get the rec- 
ommendation you must take this coat off. No 
man can be licensed to preach in a coat like 
this." 

"I have no other Sunday coat but this," re- 
plied the young man, "and it would not be right 
to throw it away and ask pa to get me another 
one." 

"I tell you, my son, this t$oat must come 
off." 

"Well, if they are going to license my coat, 
and not me, I will change it; but I don't expect 
to change it until I am obliged to get another." 

Collinsworth was in a minority, and after de- 
bating Pierce's coat sometime, the society agreed 
to license him, swallow- tailed coat and all. It 
is pleasant to note that years after, when the 
candidate showed his capacity for and devotion 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. Ill 

to the itineracy, Collinsworth admitted that the 
young man would really make a Methodist 
preacher. 

One of his earliest appointments is thus de- 
scribed by him: "I rode ten miles through a 
drenching rain to Flat Rock Chapel, to find only 
two persons there — a man and a boy. I was 
wet to the skin and benumbed. After waiting 
a few minutes and no additions coming, I said: 
'We might as well leave here, as there will be 
no congregation.' The man quietly responded: 
'Through five miles of pelting rain I have come 
to hear preaching.' I saw at once my duty, and 
said, 'You- are right; you are entitled to it,' and 
for one hour I addressed my little congregation, 
and was never heard with more attention." 

At the age of twenty-one he was installed at 
Augusta, and even at that age was an orator 
who was the wonder as well as the admiration 
of his flock and the surrounding country. Aft- 
er this, only a few months later, he was ap- 
pointed to preach at Savannah, then the largest 
city in Georgia. 

Like most of the preachers of that time, his 
pay was not sufficient to support a family in af- 
fluence, but he married, and soon after was sent 
to Charleston. Landing there with his young 
wife among entire strangers, with only two dol- 
lars and fifty cents, they walked two miles to 



112 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

the parsonage. The incident is recorded to 
demonstrate anew that where there's a will 
there's a way, and that one compelled to under- 
go such hardships may yet rise to the most im- 
portant position, as Pierce rose. 

CoL Richard Malcolm Johnston, whose fame 
as a litterateur became national after the civil 
war, thus describes the camp meetings that 
were so common in Pierce's early days, and the 
power of the young man: "O, what an array of 
pigs and lambs and chickens and turkeys and 
geese and ducks and melons and fruits and pies 
and all such (at these gatherings)! These are 
not to the purpose, I admit. But at this late 
date and this remote jjlace I cannot think, with- 
out thanks, of those dinners. But let these go 
now. Except in the eating line it was rather a 
dull time for two or three days, and the preach- 
ers would scold the young men when, after es- 
corting the girls to the stand, they would go 
back to the tents and smoke their cigars. In 
these days George Pierce would have little to 
say, but as the time approached when it was ex- 
pected to break up he would seem to be op- 
pressed with grief that so little had been done 
in bringing sinners to repentance. And then he 
would begin — and such sermons! , . ♦ His 
round, sonorous voice, as from time to time he 
rose on tiptoe and poured it out in its full pow- 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 113 

er, reverberated among the woods far beyond 
the limits of the cam]), and one could almost im- 
agine that he could see the terrific things that are 
to befall the lost in the eternal world. And how 
they did rush then to the altar, young men and 
maidens, old men and women. They had terror 
in their faces, too, and in their hearts." 

At the age of twenty-five he was the most 
popular preacher in Georgia of any denomina- 
tion. When the female school was organized 
in Macon he became President; this was in 
1838. He had his political convictions too — 
was, as a friend of his has said, an old-time 
Whig till the party died; then a Union man, 
then a fully developed friend of the Confeder- 
acy, and last of all a Democrat of a somewhat 
Bourbonish cast. He believed in slavery, de- 
claring that it was the best for the negro race 
while living among the whites, and when the 
great rupture occurred in the Church in 1844 he 
denounced in scathing terms the movements of 
the abolitionists of the North and of those lead- 
ers in the Church who made war on Bishop An- 
drew when through his marriage he became the 
owner of slaves. He was one of the most im- 
passioned and fearless speakers on that occasion. 
He termed the abolitionists "busybodies in oth- 
er men's matters, a thorn in the flesh, a messen- 
ger of Satan to buffet us," and referred to their 



114 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

movement as "the foul spirit of the pit, the Jug- 
gernaut of perdition." 

At the Conference of 1854 he was elected 
bishop. He was until his death One of the most 
active workers in the college. He traveled 
much in this capacity, and from his letters, al- 
ways interesting, we get insight into matters not 
of current knowledge. For instance, he in 1855 
thus describes an Indian revival in the West: 
"On Sabbath night I tried to preach, by re- 
quest, without an interpreter, as most of the 
Indians would understand me, and many whites 
were anxious to hear. Brother Mitchell con- 
cluded with an exhortation, and invited mourn- 
ers to the altar. Several came forward, and the 
closing exercises were resigned to the Indian 
preachers. They sang, prayed, wept, clapped 
their hands, and seemed as much at home in the 
business as we are at a camp meeting. The 
strange sounds, all barbarian to me, amused 
me; but the tones, the spirit, the earnestness of 
the people, melted me to tears. I felt that the 
religion of the Bible had obliterated the dis- 
tinctions of color, race, and nation, and that a 
common salvation made us brethren in spirit, 
partakers of like precious faith, one in sympa- 
thy, hope, and prospect." 

Dr. Pierce was bishop for thirty years. He 
died in 1884. 



JOHN BELL. 




John Bell's father 
was a farmer of fair cir- 
cumstances, and lived 
near Nashville, Tenn., 
where the son was born, 
in 1797. The latter, aft- 
er preparing himself for 
the law, located at Frank- 
lin, and was shortly 
elected to the Legisla- 
ture. Refusing a reelec- 
tion, he adhered to his profession until 1827, 
when he became a candidate for Congress against 
Felix Grundy. Both of these candidates were 
avowed friends of Gen. Jackson, though Bell 
was not quite so enthusiastic in his support, 
and he was twenty years younger than Grundy. 
The latter had considerable experience in the 
public service, having been on the supreme 
bench of Kentucky. In his adopted State of 
Tennessee he had been elected to Congress. 
Moreover, he had been a warm supporter of the 
war of 1812, the Federalists having declared 
that that war was instigated by Madison, Grun- 
dy, and the devil. Perhaps he was the greatest 

(115) 



116 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

criminal lawyer that the Southwest has ever 
produced. He was said never to have defended 
but one man who was afterwards hanged. It 
can be imagined, therefore, that the person hav- 
ing the temerity to oppose him would not win 
success without .a considerable struggle, with the 
fates in his behalf. But Bell was no mean op- 
ponent. He had been a student, had enjoyed a 
classical education, and his talents for speaking 
had been assiduously improved. His powerful 
logic on the stump and his thorough grasp of the 
political questions, his power of invective, and 
his elevated tone of oratory, made him a delight 
in the days when the people got their intellectual 
pabulum from the public speakers. Gen. Jack- 
son appreciated blind devotion on the part of 
his friends, and perhaps this is why he took 
sides with Grundy, a more vociferous friend than 
Bell. Bell was elected by a considerable ma- 
jority, but he felt sore over Jackson's unfriend- 
liness, and remembered Jackson's offense to the 
latter' s hurt. 

He was reelected to Congress six terms, and 
was for ten years Chairman of the Committee 
on Indian Affairs. On the floor of the Lower 
House he was admired for his oratory; but he 
was not a debater, and he never gained the as- 
cendency there to which he was really entitled. 
He was at first a free trader, but became an ear- 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. H? 

nest protectionist, doubtless assuring himself in 
making such a radical change that the fear of 
change is the hobgoblin of little souls. He was 
also opposed to nullification. 

In 1832 he showed his animosity toward Jack- 
son by protesting against the removal of the 
United States Bank deposits, having voted 
against rechartering the bank. This widened 
the breach between the two distinguished Ten- 
nesseeans. 

Bell was one of the founders of the Whig 
party. He and his followers were called the 
Hew Whigs by the Democrats. He opposed 
the election of Martin Van Buren to the Presi- 
dency, and that "completed his sins in the esti- 
mation of Jackson." But the latter could not 
prevent his reelection to Congress. He was 
made Secretary of War under President Harri- 
son, and was a member of Tyler's Cabinet when 
all the members thereof except Webster re- 
signed in the celebrated fight of the Whigs 
against Tyler for his alleged treason to their 

party. 

In 1847 he was elected to the United States 
Senate, of which body he was a member for 
twelve years. Here he was appreciated at his 
worth; here he properly displayed his talents, 
and he was a distinguished figure where towered 
such statesmen as Henry Clay, Stephen A. 



118 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

Douglas, Jolm J. Crittenden, Charles Sumner, 
Jefferson Davis, Judah P. Benjamin, and An- 
drew Johnson. 

He was prominent in the Senate in his oppo- 
sition to the radical measures of the abolition- 
ists, and was a "constitutional Union" man. 
In 1860 he was nominated for the Presidency, 
Edward Everett receiving the nomination for 
the Vice Presidency, the split occurring at the 
time among the Conservatives assuring the elec- 
tion of Abraham Lincoln. After the election 
of Lincoln he advocated secession, although, 
like many another prominent Southern states- 
man, he had opposed this measure previous to 
1861. 

"With the exception of Jackson and Andrew 
Johnson, Bell was perhaps the brainiest states- 
man Tennessee has produced. He died at Cum- 
berland Iron Works, Tenn., in 1869. 



JOHN B. McFERRIN. 




Dxibing the nine- 
teenth century the Meth- 
odist Church gave to 
America some of its 
most eloquent and schol- 
arly men. If they were 
to pass in review before 
the imagination, some- 
what as Carlyle intro- 
duces certain notables 
of the French Revolu- 
tion, the on-looker would be profoundly im- 
pressed by the pageant; and perhaps the gaze 
would rest long on the robust person of the sub- 
ject of this sketch. 

Born of humble and obscure parentage at Mur- 
freesboro, Tenn., and denied great educational 
advantages, it was his destiny to be one of Meth- 
odism's mainstays — his to figure prominently in 
some of the most important affairs of his time; 
his to be pointed at after a ministerial career of 
threescore years and have it said: "Here was a 
man." 

John B. McFerrin was educated in what 
some one has termed the People's University, 

(119) 



120 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

an old field school. At the age of sixteen he 
was a class leader, and a minister of the gospel 
before he arrived at his majority. When a very 
young man he was for some reason sent as a 
missionary to the Cherokee Indians. His station 
was Creek Path, lying south of the Tennessee 
River, near what is now known as Carter's 
Landing. His work embraced three regular 
preaching places, besides a small school for In- 
dian children. He was equal to the task, young 
as he was, inexperienced as he was, used as 
the Indians were to associating wisdom with 
age. He and his associates were instrumental 
in converting to Christianity a number of the 
most prominent Cherokees, among them John 
Ross, the principal chieftain. 

After his two years' service among the In- 
dians he was sent to preach to the white people 
again. He gradually rose by force of character 
and labor, even among such rivals in the Church 
as Robert Paine, A. L. P. Green, Fountain E. 
Pitts, John W. Hanner, Thomas Maddin, and 
others equally as powerful and gifted; and it 
was not long before he was assigned to Nash- 
ville, then the capital of Tennessee and the 
home of some of the brightest lawyers and 
statesmen of the Southwest. Here he proved 
himself as worthy of the title of the "Great 
Commoner" as Jackson or Johnson; he became 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 121 

equally popular with Christians and with the 
horse-racing and treating politicians. Perhaps 
this capacity for keeping the confidence and ven- 
eration of the worldly was instrumental in cre- 
ating the strong religious convictions of some 
of the leading men of the times, whose voca- 
tions were not conducive to spiritual medita- 
tion. 

In the sketches of Andrew Jackson and other 
statesmen we rarely find any extended reference 
to their connection with religious bodies. The 
session of the Tennessea Conference for 1838 was 
held at Nashville. McFerrin tells a touching 
episode of the session. "During the session of 
the Conference," he says, "Gen. Jackson, ex- 
President of the United States, visited the city 
and expressed a desire to visit the Conference, 
as he had some old friends in the body. Joshua 
Boucher, Robert Paine, and myself were ap- 
pointed a committee to wait on the General and 
escort him to the Conference room. The scene 
was interesting and -affecting. Gen. Jackson 
was growing old, had become a Christian, and 
was a great friend to the Methodists. He was 
introduced to the Bishop and then to the Con- 
ference, and after a few pleasant words the body 
was called to prayer. Bishop Andrew offered a 
most fervent address to the throne of grace, 
while the whole Conference responded with 



122 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

hearty 'Aniens.' The General then passed 
down the aisle of the church, when each preach- 
er gave him the parting hand. When Cornelius 
Evans, a plain old farmer-looking preacher, 
grasped his hand, the General exclaimed, 'Mr. 
Evans!' and both burst into tears. Evans had 
been one of his brave soldiers in the Indian 
wars. They had not met for years. Both be- 
came soldiers of Jesus Christ, and now met in 
the Church of God. Gen. Jackson recognized 
him instantly." 

While the spiritual salvation of the humblest 
is as important as that of the most exalted per- 
sonage, there is yet an unusual interest attach- 
ing to the fact that the conversion of Pres- 
ident James K. Polk was under Dr. McFerrin. 
In 1833, near Columbia, Tenn., he preached a 
sermon which greatly affected Polk, then a 
young lawyer, and the impression was indelible. 
From that day the latter was a changed man. 
He did not connect himself with the Church, 
however. It is said that the reason for this was 
that his wife and mother were Presbyterians, 
while he was a Methodist in belief, and he did 
not care to separate from them in Church affili- 
ation. On his return from Washington, at the 
expiration of his term as President, he settled 
in Nashville. His fixed purpose was to join the 
Church. In his last illness he sent for McFer- 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 123 

rin, revealed the matter to him, and requested 
that he be baptized and received into the Meth- 
odist Church. McFerrin also preached the fu- 
neral sermon, from the .text on which was 
preached the one under which Polk was convict- 
ed in 1833. 

The Southwestern Christian Advocate had been 
located at Nashville in 1836, and Rev. Thomas 
Stringfield made editor. Stringfield declined a 
reelection, and in 1840 McFerrin became editor, 
a position he held for eighteen years. A biog- 
rapher says: "His extraordinary physical and 
mental energy enabled him to perform the work 
of several men. He wrote editorials, he edited 
obituaries, he wrestled with the volunteer poets 
(whose name then as now was legion), he clipped 
and pasted selections, he acted as mailing clerk, 
he canvassed for subscribers, he hired and paid 
the printers, he preached at camp meetings and 
in revivals, and conducted theological contro- 
versies." 

McFerrin was a delegate to the General Con- 
ference at New York in 1844 — the most memo- 
rable Conference in the annals of Methodism in 
this country — -and was Chairman of the Com- 
mittee on Itinerancy. It is unnecessary to say 
that his sympathies were with the South in the 
great cataclysm of that year, as he was a leading 
Southern sympathizer in the war between the 



124 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

States — preaching to the Confederates encamped 
near Greensboro, N. C, while Joseph E. John- 
ston and the Federals were settling on the terms 
of surrender. 

In 1881 he attended the Methodist Ecumenical 
Conference in London, and the Centenary Con- 
ference in Baltimore three years later. At the 
first he was particularized by the English pa- 
pers as being one of the Americans who had a 
peculiarly distinct personal appearance; at the 
latter he was perhaps the most venerable fig- 
ure. 

In conclusion, Dr. McFerrin, while having 
some antagonisms in the Church, was held in 
the highest respect, and was greatly loved by 
those who best understood him. His treatment 
by his people and by all denominations tended 
to refute the idea that the Church crucifies, 
then canonizes her saints. As a preacher he 
was able, often eloquent, always convincing; in 
satire he was a master, and his wit was the life 
of every Conference he attended after rising 
to distinction. 




JAMES K. POLK. 

North Carolina has 
been called tbe Rip Van 
Winkle of the States, 
but many of the great 
men of this government 
were born in North Car- 
olina. Andrew Jackson, 
Thomas Benton, John "?■ 
Sevier, Andrew Johnson, 
and James K. Polk hailed 
from that State. 
Polk removed to Tennessee at an early age. 
His first distinction in politics was when he, in 
an age and country when dueling was a proper 
mode of settling "affairs of honor," secured in 
the State Legislature the enactment of a law to 
prevent the practice. In 1825 he was elected 
to Congress, and was reelected in every suc- 
ceeding election until 1839, when he retired to 
become the Democratic candidate for Governor 
of Tennessee, and was elected to that position. 

Before the next election for Governor came 
off the Whig party had gained numerically. 
He had an opponent, too, who gave him more 
trouble than he had ever before had on the 

(125) 



126 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

stump. This was James C. Jones, a farmer who 
had, up to his nomination, made little reputa- 
tion out of his county. Though thus inexpe- 
rienced and unknown to fame, Jones was to 
meet the greatest stump speaker in the South- 
west. With an intuition, or because of his 
great knowledge of human nature, Polk dread- 
ed Jones, and tried to avoid him, but the latter 
made every sacrifice to meet him. A historian 
says: "Jones's personal appearance gave him an 
advantage on the stump. He was ungainly and 
very slender. He was six feet two inches tall, 
and weighed only one hundred and twenty-five 
pounds. He walked with a precise military step, 
not unlike a soldier on parade. His complex- 
ion was swarthy, his nose was large, and his 
expression was grave and solemn. His hair was 
thin and curly. His mouth was extraordinarily 
large. His eyes were small and gray, and were 
shaded by heavy eyebrows. But his address, 
which was cordial and kind, more than re- 
deemed his personal appearance. He had a 
touch of pleasant deference which rendered 
him extremely popular with his female constit- 
uency. He lacked the personal dignity which 
made it difficult for Polk to unbend in the 
light badinage of flippant conversation. He 
avoided all serious argument. But he had a 
genius for perverting and confounding words 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 127 

and terms, and would frequently harp on what 
he called a strange inconsistency of his worthy 
opponent, which resulted alone in his using 
some word used by Polk, and giving it a differ- 
ent significance. Jones was a master of all the 
arts of caricature and simulation. His impress- 
ive gravity, his powers of ridicule and traves- 
ty, his anecdotes told with irresistible humor, 
added to his queer figure, his capacious mouth, 
and his large nose, kept his audience in a state 
of perpetual uproar. People began to laugh 
the moment he arose. He told the most gro- 
tesque, the most ludicrous anecdotes with a 
mien of funereal gravity. When at a loss for 
something to say, he looked solemnly toward 
his audience, and then turned slowly and re- 
proachfully toward his competitor, w r hile the 
crowd burst into roars of laughter at the sight. 
The Democrats and Polk were mortified but not 
surprised when the same party which had elect- 
ed Harrison President with cabins, coons, and 
cider elected Jones Governor with anecdotes, 
laughter, and waggery." 

When nominated for President against Henry 
Clay, Polk fared better than in his second can- 
vass for Governor: he was elected. In making 
the canvass he advanced the promise that if elect- 
ed he would never again ask for the office. 
This was an innovation. When elected he hon- 



128 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

ored literature by making the historian, George 
Bancroft, a member of his cabinet. 

During his administration the war with Mex- 
ico occurred. This was perhaps forced by the 
United States; at least it may be said now that 
the differences between the two countries could 
have been settled without resort to arms. There 
were those who talked then as now of our mani- 
fest destiny; and there were those who held with 
Lowell in the "Biglow Papers," 

That all this big talk of our destinies 

Is half of it ign'ance an' t'other half rum. 

The American army under Gen. Zachary Tay- 
lor had actually been ordered on Mexican ter- 
ritory, and when it was declared that Mexico 
had committed an outrage on American soil, 
Abraham Lincoln, then in Congress, introduced 
his "spot resolution" to ascertain where the 
outrage was committed. The administration 
was forced into the war through politics, though 
before his nomination Polk declared for annexa- 
tion of Texas. 

It seemed for a time that he would have to 
conduct another war also, this time between 
England and the United States over the bound- 
ary of Oregon, but the question was satisfacto- 
rily settled by treaty. 

On the subject of the tariff Polk was of the 
opinion that the farmer and planter were as 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 120 

much entitled to protection as the mechanic. In 
accordance with his views, a bill providing for a 
purely revenue tariff was framed and adopted. 

The old conflict between the friends and op- 
ponents of slavery came up as a prominent fea- 
ture while he was President. He was not a 
slavery propagandist, and so had no proslavery 
policy. He deprecated the agitation of the mat- 
ter by the abolitionists, and encouraged such 
compromises as would tend to keep the Union 
intact. 

It must be admitted that the administration 
of Polk was brilliant. For $15,000,000, in ad- 
dition to direct war taxes, New Mexico and Up- 
per California were gained, and our southwest- 
ern boundary extended to the Rio Grande. 
Through his recommendation there was the rati- 
fication of the treaty which gave American citi- 
zens the right of way across the Isthmus of 
Panama; and other advantages due to him were 
the postal treaty with Great Britain in 1848, 
and the commercial treaty with the secondary 
states of the German confederation, by which we 
could reach growing markets on favorable terms. 

Vice President Dallas's tribute to Polk is 
just, — to the effect that ho was temperate but not 
unsocial, industrious but accessible, punctual 
but patient, moral without austerity, and devo- 
votional but not bigoted. 
9 




ROGER B. TANEY. 



Two of the most noted 
chief justices of the 
United States have been 
from the South: John i 
Marshall and Roger B. I 
Taney (pronounced Taw- I 
ney). Both had expe- 
rience in statesmanship 
also. 

Taney was born in 
Maryland, and was a 
brother-in-law of Francis Scott Key, author of 
the national song, "The Star-Spangled Ban- 
ner." His acuteness and eloquence soon placed 
him among the foremost lawyers of his State. 
He had political ambitions, but became some- 
what unpopular on account of defending Gen. 
James Wilkinson before a court-martial. Gen. 
Wilkinson, who had been a soldier under Wash- 
ington, becoming intimate with Benedict Ar- 
nold and Aaron Burr during the time, had un- 
dertaken the betrayal of his country to Spain 
by trying to induce the pioneers of Kentucky and 
the western territory of North Carolina to be- 
come alienated from the colonies and attach 
(130) 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 131 

themselves to Spain. Later on, he was thought 
to be connected with Burr in his scheme to erect 
a southwestern empire. Through an idea that 
Gen. Wilkinson was unjustly charged, Taney 
was induced to defend the officer, sharing the 
odium that attached to the latter, and refusing 
to take a fee. Eight years afterwards he again 
defied the disapprobation of his neighbors by 
courageously appearing in defense of Jacob 
Gruber, a Methodist minister from Pennsylva- 
nia who had in a camp meeting condemned sla- 
very in bitter language, and who was indicted as 
an inciter of insurrection among the negroes. 
In view of an expression afterwards used by 
Taney in the famous Dred Scott decision, it is 
interesting to note that in his opening argument 
for Gruber he declared of slavery that "while 
it continues it is a blot on our national charac- 
ter." 

Taney was a great friend of Andrew Jackson, 
becoming the latter's most trusted counselor, 
and encouraged the President in his war on the 
United States Bank. This made him unpop- 
ular with Jackson's political enemies, and when 
he was appointed Secretary of State the hostile 
majority rejected the appointment, it being the 
first time that the President's selection of a 
cabinet officer had not been confirmed. 

After the death of John Marshall, Taney was 



132 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

nominated to be Chief Justice of the United 
States, and though Henry Clay was active in 
denouncing the appointment, it was confirmed 
by a vote of twenty-nine against fifteen. Two 
of America's greatest law writers (Joseph Story 
and Jame Kent) were on the bench with him, 
and often dissented from his opinions. The 
truth is, Taney believed in State rights, while 
Marshall was inclined against the doctrine, and 
that fact is one of the reasons the latter has al- 
ways been more popular with the North, and 
not because he was a greater jurist. 

From 1854 till his death Judge Taney was 
called upon to decide cases that affected not 
only individuals, but sections of the Union. In 
that year, in the midst of the excitement that 
attended the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska 
bill and the strife of the slaveholders and free- 
soilers, he was confronted by the famous Dred 
Scott case. It involved the question: Could 
Congress exclude slavery in the Territories? 
After being twice argued, the case was decided 
in 1857. The opinion of the court was written 
by the Chief Justice. He held that Dred Scott, 
a slave, was debarred from seeking a remedy in 
the United States Court of Missouri, as he was not 
a citizen of that State, and, being a slave, could 
not become a citizen by act of any State or of 
the United States. In the opinion this dictum 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 133 

was made, which set the abolitionists to harping 
more than ever: "They [the negroes] had for 
more than a century before been regarded as 
beings of an inferior order, and altogether un- 
fit to associate with the white race either in so- 
cial or political relations, and so far inferior 
that they had no rights which the white man 
was bound to respect, and that the negro might 
justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for 
his benefit." As a consequence, the decision — 
containing a proposition that we must look on 
to-day as an extreme one — produced a strong 
reaction in favor of the antislavery party. Wil- 
liam H. Seward, in the Senate, made a direct 
attack on the Supreme Court. 

In 1858 a second "slave case" was presented, 
and as all these assisted materially in hastening 
the civil war, it is necessarily of interest as his- 
tory as well as a pointer to a great man's way 
of reasoning. Sherman M. Booth, who had 
been sentenced by the United States District 
Court for aiding in the escape of a negro from 
slavery, was released by the Supreme Court of 
Wisconsin, which refused to notice the subse- 
quent mandates of the Supreme Court of the 
United States relative to the affair. 

This was bordering on the doctrine of nullifi- 
cation, which appeared odious in South Caro- 
lina a quarter of a century before. The Su- 



134 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

preme Court of the United States reversed the 
judgment of the Court of Wisconsin, declaring 
the fugitive slave law constitutional — that it 
was the law of the land; whereupon Wisconsin's 
Legislature placed that State side by side with 
South Carolina as to nullification. It declared 
that the States, as parties to a compact, have an 
equal right to determine infractions of their 
rights and the mode of their redress, and that 
the judgment of the Federal Court was "void 
and of no force." 

Chief Justice Taney died on the day on which 
Maryland abolished slavery. 




ZACHARY TAYLOR. 

Washington, J a c k- 
son, and William Henry 
Harrison had been elect- 
ed to the presidency on 
their military record. 
His activity in military 
affairs made Zachary 
Taylor the Twelfth 
President of the United 
States. 

When a young man 
Taylor saw service against the Indians. "In 
such service," as a biographer has suggest- 
ed, "not the less hazardous or indicative of 
merit because on a small scale, he passed the 
period of his employment on the frontier, until 
the treaty of peace with Great Britain (in our 
second war with that country) disposed the In- 
dians to be quiet." In 1836 he had been pro- 
moted to a colonelcy, and was ordered to Flor- 
ida for service in the Seminole war. The next 
year he defeated the Indians at Okechobee, the 
battle being a decisive one. He was then made 
a brigadier general, and appointed to the chief 
command of Florida, 

(135) 



136 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

When Mexico threatened the invasion of Tex- 
as, which State had been annexed to the United 
States, he was appointed to defend it as a por- 
tion of this country. His career during the war 
with Mexico was characterized by conspicuous 
gallantry and skill. 

It is stated, as showing the poor opinion 
the country had of the territory acquired from 
Mexico by the war, that Taylor, when Presi- 
dent, sent Capt. W. T. Sherman to Arizona and 
Southern California to investigate their value. 
Young Sherman was gone some time. Return- 
ing to Washington, he called on the President. 

"Well, Captain, what do you think of our 
new possessions?" asked Taylor. "Will they 
pay for the blood and treasure spent in the 
war?" 

"Do you want my honest opinion?" replied 
Sherman. 

"Yes, tell us privately just what you think." 

"Well, General, it cost us one hundred mil- 
lions of dollars and ten thousand men to carry 
on the war." 

"Yes, fully that; but we got Arizona, New 
Mexico, and Southern California." 

"Well, General," continued Sherman, "I've 
been out there and looked them over, and be- 
tween you me I feel that we've got to go to war 
again. Yes, we've got to have another war." 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 137 

< 'What for?" asked Taylor. 

"Why, to make 'em take the infernal coun- 
try back! " 

Like Washington and Grant, he was "a silent 
man." Unpretending, meditative, and observ- 
ant, he was best understood by those who knew 
him intimately. Before his nomination for the 
presidency it is said that he had no political 
ambitions. But his party, the Whigs, saw in 
him a popular candidate, and called him from 
his comparative retirement. Realizing that 
many years of military routine had kept him 
from a knowledge of the civil service, he 
formed a cabinet whose members would be 
his counselors. They were all lawyers, and 
had served in the Senate of the United States. 
But his administration, as was that of Harrison, 
was cut short by death, and what he would have 
accomplished in the capacity of President is 
merely speculative. "With him," says Jeffer- 
son Davis, his son-in-law, "the bestowal of of- 
fice was a trust held for the people; it was not 
to be gained by proof of party zeal or labor. 
The fact of holding Democratic opinions was 
not a disqualification for the office. Nepotism had 
with him no quarter. So strict was he in this 
that to be a relative was an obstacle to appoint- 
ment." All of his four sons were soldiers, ei- 
ther in the Confederate or United States armies. 



DAVID CROCKETT. 




Many a beautiful and 
true maxim has been 
given us after painstak- 
ing study and selection 
of words, as, "Fidelity 
is seven-tenths business 
success," by Parton; or, 
"If any man seeks for 
greatness, let him forget 
greatness and ask for 
truth, and he will find 
both," by Mann; or, "Two persons cannot long 
be friends if they cannot forgive each other's 
failings," by Bruyere. But none of these sen- 
tences embodies more than that maxim coined 
on the moment by the backwoods statesman, 
Davy Crockett: "Be sure you are right, and 
then go ahead." The golden rule, charity, and 
perseverance are all compressed therein. 

Crockett, whatever were his failings in other 
respects, lived up to the go-ahead part, and gen- 
erally looked well to the right side of an under- 
taking. He had the hardihood to oppose An- 
drew Jackson when he thought that person was 
in the wrong, and when he thought the Texans 
(138) 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 139 

were being tyrannized over he unhesitatingly 
laid down his life in their behalf. These are 
notable instances out of many in the life of that 
most original of all Tennesseeans. 

Crockett was born in Greene County, Tenn., 
in 1786. His father was a soldier of the Revo- 
lution, and was of Irish birth, and after the war 
opened a small tavern in East Tennessee, on the 
road from Knoxville to Abingdon. Those old 
taverns, or stations, were interesting places in 
the earlier settlements, and had guests of ruf- 
fians as well as refined persons; emigrants from 
the older States to the great and new South- 
west, some of them soldiers who had fought 
under Washington and Marion; a sprinkling of 
Tories, perhaps, and adventurers who saw a 
chance to win a home and wealth in the wilder- 
ness. 

At an early age he displayed the will which 
was one of his strongly marked characteristics. 
When only twelve his father hired him to an 
old Dutchman, with whom he went four hun- 
dred miles on foot; but the lad remained in this 
service only a few weeks, when he ran away and 
returned home. 

His father then sent him to school. He got 
along for four days pretty well, but at the end 
of that time he had a quarrel with one of the 
pupils and gave him a sound flogging. He 



140 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

thereupon played truant; and finally, knowing 
that he would be chastised by his father if he 
went home, he left the neighborhood. 

For three years his life was somewhat hard — 
his lines were indeed east in unpleasant places. 
He worked three years for teamsters in Tennes- 
see, Maryland, and Virginia, and for eighteen 
months was bound to a hatter in the Old Domin- 
ion. At last, like the prodigal son, his thoughts 
centered on home, and he returned. 

The good effect which the memory of home 
has had on mankind is an argument for the pro- 
tection of that "castle" from all the movements 
that would undermine it, and for parents to 
make it as pleasant as possible to those under 
their care. Recollections of it may be a means 
of turning into a more useful channel a life 
wrongly begun. When upon the heights of Beth- 
el Jacob asked of Jehovah that he might come 
again to his father's house in peace; this was home- 
sickness. Before Joseph's death in Egypt he ex- 
acted of his attendants that some day his bones 
should be carried back to the scenes familiar to 
his childhood; this was because of homesick- 
ness. What was it but this sentiment that 
made Daniel in captivity keep his window open 
in the direction of Canaan? 

This mighty emotion which survives all vicis- 
situdes may have softened greatly the heart of 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 141 

the Tennessee boy, grown wild and reckless 
through his associations; for on his return it 
seems that he was more obedient, and was so 
filial and sensitive to honor that he worked hard 
for a year to pay two notes amounting to sev- 
enty-six dollars which his father owed. 

When almost grown to manhood he was ig- 
norant in books, and attended school only six 
months. Marrying at the age of twenty-two or 
twenty-three, he settled in Franklin County, 
then one of the wildest portions of the State. 
Here he devoted himself to hunting, and made 
quite a reputation on account of his success in 
bear-hunting, for even that late to be efficient 
with the rifle, and thus taming the wilderness, 
was an accomplishment. Whatever his sphere, 
Crockett seemed to use his best endeavors; and 
it is more honorable to succeed in a humble un- 
dertaking than to be placed in an exalted one 
and fail. 

When the Creek Indian war came up, in 
1813, he enlisted in a regiment of sixty-day 
volunteers, and served through the war. He 
and Sam Houston won the praise of Gen. Jack- 
son in this war, and Jackson's early friendship 
was of material benefit to both afterwards in 
their political aspirations. 

The love of adventure was inherent in him, it 
seems; for after the defeat of the Indians he 



142 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

settled on Shoal Creek, another wild section of 
country, and he and a few other settlers formed 
a temporary government, he being made magis- 
trate. He was subsequently appointed colonel 
of militia. 

He now evinced some aspirations for office, 
and became a candidate for the State Legisla- 
ture. Although uneducated, and knowing but 
little about the political questions of the day, he 
was elected by a considerable majority, win- 
ning, it is said, by telling humorous stories and 
by his skill with the rifle. After a while he 
was elected to Congress, supporting Jackson. 
He served two terms. 

In his second term he was a bitter opponent of 
Old Hickory, although he must have known 
that his position would bring about defeat in a 
district which considered Jackson a hero. Said 
he on one occasion: "I am at liberty to vote 
as my conscience and judgment dictate to be 
right, without the yoke of any party on me, or 
the driver at my heels with his whip in hand, 
commanding me to gee-whoa-haw, just at his 
pleasure." 

His independence brought about his defeat 
for the third term; and, discomfited, but mainly 
sympathizing with the Texans in their struggle 
for independence, he repaired to Texas, and 
gave up his life in their defense, winning, like 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 143 

Byron in the cause of Greece, an abiding fame 
in the history of heroic deeds. 

In Washington he was very popular on ac- 
count of his native shrewdness and common 
sense, and noted because of his eccentricities. 

In 1833 there appeared an unauthorized ac- 
count of his life from a Philadelphia house, and 
he followed it with a characteristic autobiogra- 
phy. He also published a "Tour to the North 
and Down East," and a readable burlesque, 
"Life of Van Buren, Heir Apparent to the 
Government." 

In the war between Texas and Mexico ne and 
one hundred and thirty-nine others made a most 
gallant defense of the Alamo against an over- 
whelming force of Mexicans. He was one of 
only six survivors who finally surrendered, and 
were massacred by order of Santa Anna. 

His son, John W. Crockett, rose also to dis- 
tinction, being at one time a member of Congress. 

Crockett had personal frailties, but he also 
had many noble attributes of heart, and his ca- 
reer calls to mind the lines of Joaquin Miller on 
Byron and Burns: 

In men whom men condemn as ill 

I find so much of goodness still, 

In men whom men pronounce divine 

I find so much of sin and blot; 
I hesitate to draw a line 

Between the two where God has not. 



JEFFERSON DAVIS. 




On his last years were cruel- 
ly expended 
Hope's curse arid slan- 
der's spleen; 

But tears of those he loved 
long and defended 

Will keep his memory 
green. 

The most hated of all 
men in one part of the 
American republic in the 
latter half of the nineteenth century was Jeffer- 
son Davis. He was as deeply venerated in anoth- 
er part during that period as the representative of 
a cause that was lost. Men do not revere their 
dead the less because they are dead. 

Two paths of distinction were open to him: 
he might have been a great soldier instead of a 
distinguished statesman. On his graduation he 
served in the army on the frontier, taking part 
in the Black Hawk war of 1831-32; but in 1835 
. resigned his position of lieutenant of dragoons, 
married (after a romantic elopement) a daughter 
of Zachary Taylor, and retired to a plantation 
in Mississippi. But he was not contented with 
(141) 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 145 

private life, and became a candidate for Con- 
gress in 1845, and was elected. Resigning that 
office, he became a colonel of the First Missis- 
sippi Rifles, and led his regiment to reenforce 
Gen. Taylor in the war with Mexico. His skill 
and gallantry were so conspicuous that his fa- 
ther-in-law, it is said, refused longer to harbor 
any ill feelings which grew out of the marriage 
of his daughter to Davis. At Monterey lie 
charged on Fort Leneria without bayonets, and 
led his command through the streets nearly to 
the grand plaza amid a storm of shot; and at 
Buena Yista he gained a signal victory over a 
much larger force. 

He was elected United States Senator twice 
before the civil war, and was a zealous State 
rights advocate. He resigned his seat in the 
Senate, and was made Secretary of War by 
President Pierce, and there has not been an 
abler Secretary of War since the foundation of 
the government, perhaps. 

When the Southern States seceded he was in 
the United States Senate, and resigned after 
Mississippi went out of the Union. 

He became President of the Southern Confed- 
eracy, while Alexander H. Stephens became 
Vice President. In his first message to the Pro- 
visional Congress, while condemning as illegal 
and absurd Lincoln's proclamation calling for 
10 



146 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

troops to put down the rebellion, he made use of 
the words, "All we ask is to be let alone," which 
was so often referred to during those days. 

The people have always made use of their 
prerogative to grumble. The public seems to 
forget when disasters befall that its leaders are 
only human. In the revolutionary war there 
was a great conspiracy, encouraged largely by 
the people and Congress, to have Gen. Wash- 
ington removed as commander of the army; in 
the second war with England there was a large 
element who thought that Madison was not con- 
ducting the war wisely. Lincoln was blamed 
and cried down; and in the war with Spain in 
1898 the administration came in for abuse. 
President Davis, after the first reverses, began 
to be harassed and criticised and charged 
with being the cause of the fall of New 
Orleans and Fort Donelson. This opposition 
grew until the close of the war. It may be 
that he was partially to blame for prolonging 
the war, since so many wise statesmen saw that 
the struggle of the South was useless as early 
as 1864, among them Gov. Zebulon Vance, ot 
North Carolina, who wrote him a letter urging 
negotiation. But his sanguine temperament and 
his indomitable pluck blinded him to the grow- 
ing weakness of the South. This was the ex- 
tent of his sinning. 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 



147 



While encamped near Irwinsville, Ga., he 
was captured and taken to Fortress Monroe, 
where he was confined for two years. On May 
8, 1866, he was indicted for treason in the 
United States Court for the District of Virginia. 
The charge of complicity in the assassination of 
Lincoln, a charge instigated by the frenzy of 
the times, was dropped. His leading lawyer, 
James T. Bradley, urged a speedy trial. But 
the- government declined to proceed without 
further preparation, and the court refused to ad- 
mit the distinguished prisoner to bail. Nearly a 
year later, however, he was admitted to bail in 
the amount of $100,000. The first name on the 
bond was that of Horace Greeley, the great 
New York editor. After his release he trav- 
eled extensively in Europe. Excitement began 
to die out, the people's great love of justice re- 
turned, and the case against him was dismissed 
in December, 1868. During his confinement, 
when helpless and weak, and his prison strong- 
ly guarded, Nelson A. Miles placed him in 
irons, an act which the South has never forgiven, 
and which Gen. Miles's warmest admirers can 
hardly condone in good faith. 

Whatever may have been the Southern peo- 
ple's idea of his administration, the impression 
they formed that he was to suffer alone as their 
representative made him more popular with 



148 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

them than ever before. To-day he is their 
revered hero. 

He, like Robert Toombs, never took the 
oath of allegiance to the United States, and 
some of the politicians never ceased to traduce 
him. In 1876, when the bill was before the 
House of Representatives to remove the politi- 
cal disabilities imposed on those who had fought 
for and aided the Confederacy, Blaine offered an 
amendment excepting Davis, making an on- 
slaught on the latter which brought out the scath- 
ing reply of Ben Hill, of Georgia. In 1879, 
through the efforts of Zachariah Chandler, Da- 
vis was excepted in a bill to pension veterans 
of the Mexican war. 

But the passions and prejudices of the war 
are passing away. The veterans of both sides 
are dwelling together as "Yorkist and Lancas- 
trian." As late as 1899 a Republican President, 
a veteran of the Union army, intimated that the 
valor of the Confederates should be cherished 
as an American legacy, an honor to American 
arms. The country is thoroughly reunited, and 
it is the duty of every Southerner, while cher- 
ishing the glory won on the field by Southern 
valor, to assist in preserving the States, "though 
many as the waves, one as the sea." 




ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 

The two m en who 
were pitted against each 
other from 1861 to 1865 
as President of the 
United States and Chief 
Executive of the South- 
ern Confederacy, Lin- 
coln and Davis, were 
born in Kentucky. 
While Davis went to 
Mississippi, Lincoln 
went with his parents to Indiana, and finally to 
Illinois. 

After Lincoln was elected to Congress, in 
1846, the chief Congressional measure with 
which his name was connected was a scheme for 
the emancipation of slaves in the District of 
Columbia. His idea might have been inspired 
by the earlier emancipation scheme of Clay in 
Kentucky, just as his patriotism was intensified 
by reading the "Life of Washington," by the 
Southerner, Weems. 

The interest he took in the agitation of the 
slavery question was the foundation of his pop- 
ularity in the new Republican party, made up 

(149) 



150 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

largely of antislavery Whigs, disaffected Dem- 
ocrats, and the abolitionists; and his election 
by that organization to the presidency was the 
signal for the Southern States of the Union to 
attempt secession. 

It should be explained here, however, that, 
while the agitation of slavery hastened the con- 
flict, it was not really the cause of the stubborn 
resistance of the South or the determined meas- 
ures of the North. For the mere keeping of 
slaves in bondage the South did not give the 
flower of her young manhood and millions in 
property;. for the mere freeing them the North 
would not have undertaken the task of fighting 
the South. Neither side, before things had 
gone too far for a peaceable settlement, thought 
that emancipation would be proclaimed; but 
one fought to preserve the Union intact, while 
the other strove to preserve the principle of 
State rights which had been held dear by even 
thousands of the people who made up the Union 
army, and to resent the violation of their con- 
stitutional rights. The Northern politicians, 
and not the South, had proved fickle, departing 
from "the old conception, the old traditions of 
the voluntary union of sovereign States." 

Evidently Lincoln and the North were sur- 
prised at the force of the secession movement, 
and it is not strange that he should have made 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 151 

some speeches and performed some acts which, 
looked at calmly now, must be regarded as pal- 
pable mistakes. B-ut taken all in all, his admin- 
istration during the war was fairly able, and he 
is regarded, at least from a Union standpoint, as 
a strong man for the time and occasion. 

That the emancipation of the slaves was not 
the intention of Lincoln at the outset seems 
proven by his declaration to Horace Greeley in 
1862: "My paramount object is to save the Un- 
ion, and not either to save or destroy slavery. If 
I could save the Union without freeing any slave, 
I would do it; if I could do it by freeing all the 
slaves, I would do it; and if I could do it by 
freeing some and leaving others alone, I would 
also do that." He afterwards veered, doubtless 
through the instrumentality of the antislavery 
faction of his party, which saw the weakness of 
the South, and insisted on emancipation, though 
on this measure did not depend the saving of 
the Union. 

His last public utterance gave the South, 
. now conquered, reason to believe that his policy 
toward the seceding States would be compara- 
tively mild, and when his death occurred at the 
hand of an assassin before anything could be 
definitely accomplished toward reconstuction, 
the people of the South generally deplored it 
with genuine sorrow. The circumstances of 



152 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

his assassination are of course familiar to most 
readers, as given in contemporaneous history. 
The account of it in 'the life of Laura Keene, 
the actress, however, possesses a minuteness of 
detail which gives a deeper interest. It is sub- 
stantially as follows: The play bill of Ford's 
Theater in Washington announced for the even- 
ing of April 14, 1865, the "Benefit and Last 
Night of Miss Laura Keene, the Distinguished 
Manageress, Authoress, and Actress;" and on 
the same sheet were the additional words: "This 
evening the performance will be honored by the 
presence of President Lincoln." 

The President and family occupied a box on 
the northern side of the theater that evening, 
to witness the favorite star in "Our American 
Cousin." The box was just above and on the 
stage. Miss Keene was standing behind the 
scenes on the side farthest from the presidential 
box, awaiting her cue. Before the time at 
which she was to make her entrance, a shot was 
heard, and a man was seen to leap from the 
President's box to the stage, shouting, il Sic 
semper tyrannisf The South is avenged!" A 
moment after some one, holding a dagger, rushed 
by her, and she recognized John Wilkes Booth, 
the actor. As she hurried toward the front of 
the stage she could see many men on their feet, 
women were crying aloud, and children were 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 153 

weeping — all in an indeterminate panic much as 
if an alarm of fire had been raised. Miss 
Keene, advancing toward the footlights, said to 
the audience: "For God's sake have presence of 
mind and keep your places, and all will be 
well." 

The President had been shot, and Booth, aft- 
er firing the shot and stabbing Maj. Rath bone, 
made his escape from the theater through a 
stage door, fleeing on a horse which had been 
provided for him. The assassin had been fol- 
lowed by a Mr. Stewart, one of the audience, 
down on the stage after his leap from the Pres- 
ident's box, but had avoided him by dodging 
about the scenery, and had gotten away from 
the stage carpenter, who attempted to detain 
him by striking at him with the dagger. No 
one except Mr. Stewart tried to pursue the 
fugitive, though everybody seemed willing to 
aid. Amid the confusion Miss Keene heard a 
cry for water from the presidential box. Pro- 
curing a glass, she made her way from the stage 
to the box by way of the dress circle. Mrs. 
Lincoln was crying piteously. Miss Keene at 
once did everything in her power to aid, though 
she felt from the beginning that help was use- 
less. 

Booth was killed a few days afterwards. 
His diary for some reason was suppressed, but 



154 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

it has been said on good authority that it con- 
tained his reasons for killing Lincoln. Among 
the papers of Dr. George Foote, of Warrenton, 
Va., there has been found one which gives the 
explanation of the animus of Booth, the mo- 
tive for the killing of the President. Dr. 
Foote, a surgeon in the Confederate army, 
having fallen into the hands of the Federal 
forces, was imprisoned in Fort Columbus, New 
York harbor, in a cell next to that occupied by 
Capt. John Young Beall, a Confederate officer 
who was arrested and finally hanged by the Fed- 
eral authorities on February 24, 1865, as a spy. 
While in the prison Dr. Foote was fully cogni- 
zant of the efforts made by Booth, who was 
Capt, Beall's roommate at college and his de- 
voted friend, and by Gov. Andrews, of Massa- 
chusetts, and others to save Capt. Beall's life. 
"After the plans failed," Dr. Foote says, 
"Booth hurried to Washington aud on his 
knees implored President Lincoln and Secretary 
Seward to pardon, or at least respite Beall. 
Lincoln promised to respite him, but that night 
ordered his execution. The order was executed, 
and Beall was hanged within thirty yards of 
my window and inside Fort Columbus. Booth, 
for what he termed the perfidy of President 
Lincoln toward himself and Capt. Beall, at 
once swore to avenge his friend's death by 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 155 

killing both Lincoln and Seward. He did not 
intend shooting Lincoln in the theater, but the 
contemplated opportunity did not offer itself 
elsewhere." 

The change in Lincoln's purpose to spare the 
life of Beall, it is further claimed in the docu- 
ment referred to, was brought about by Mr. 
Seward, who made such representations to his 
chief as to the effect of his leniency on the pop- 
ular mind as to induce him to order the execu- 
tion before further efforts could be made to pre- 
vent it. The effect of the killing of his friend, 
under these circumstances, was to drive Booth 
to desperation, and he determined upon a dead- 
ly measure of revenge, which, it is worth no- 
ting, included Mr. Seward with Lincoln as its 
especial objects. No other adequate explana- 
tion has ever been offered for the attempt on 
Mr. Seward's life at the same time with the as- 
sassination of the President. 




ROBERT E. LEE. 

"To be nameless in 
worthy deeds exceeds an 
infamous history," ob- 
serves an early writer. 

But to have achieved 
an honorable fame in 
worthy deeds might well 
satisfy any mortal. Aft- 
er a noble and active 
life Robert E. Lee could 
have boasted this, as 
those who are acquainted with his career can 
do for him. His is one name in American his- 
tory that is spoken of reverently. Even Wash- 
ington gave way now and then to bursts of pas- 
sion, and was known to be so strict in his business 
dealings as to be considered parsimonious. But 
who points to any public or private act of. the 
Confederate leader to criticise? Will his blame- 
lessness militate against his reputation after a 
while? "Who knows whether the best of men 
be known, or whether there be not more re- 
markable persons forgotten than any that stand 
remembered in the known account of time?" 
is a question that signifies the ease with which 
ri56) 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 157 

oblivion shrouds names. Some day future 
generations may wonder if such a splendid 
life could have really been lived, and if it has 
not been touched too tenderly by the histo- 
rians. The great Georgia orator, Ben Hill, 
says of Lee: "He was Caesar without his ambi- 
tion, Frederick without his tyrany, Napoleon 
without his selfishness, and Washington without 
his reward." And the historian and essayist, 
William P. Trent, pays him this tribute: "The 
present writer . . . would be false to him- 
self and his hero did he not claim for the 
latter a place among the greatest and finest 
spirits that have trod this earth. With the su- 
preme men of action, the small group of states- 
men-conquerors, which includes Caesar, Alexan- 
der, Charlemagne, Cromwell, Frederick, Napo- 
leon, and Washington, and perhaps one or two 
more, he cannot be ranked, because he never 
ruled a realm or a republic, and actually shrank 
in 1862 from assuming the responsibilities of 
commander in chief. We know, indeed, from 
his own words that he would not have wished to 
resemble any of these men save Washington, 
and we know also that be could not have en- 
tered their class without losing the exquisite 
modesty and unselfishness that gave him his 
unique charm. But do we, his lovers, wish to 
put Lee in any class? Should we not prefer 



158 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

him to stand alone? If we do, we have our 
wish, for no one class contains him. There is 
seemingly no character in all history that com- 
bines power and virtue and charm as he does. 
He is with the great captains, the supreme lead- 
ers of all time. He is with the good, pure men and 
chivalrous gentlemen of all time — the knights sans 
peur et sans reproche. And he is not only in 
these two noble classes of chosen spirits, but he 
is in each case either a plain leader or else with- 
out any obvious superior. But where can anoth- 
er such man be found? Of whom besides Lee 
may it be justly said that he is with Belisarius 
and Turenne and Marlborough and Moltke on 
the one hand, and on the other with Callicroti- 
das and Saint Louis, with the Chevalier Bay- 
ard and Sir Philip Sidney?" 

Whatever the future may believe, those who 
live near to the date of his greatness know that 
these eulogies, these estimates, are not merely 
oratory and fine writing, but truth. 

Robert E. Lee was born in Virginia in 1807, 
and was graduated from the West Point Mili- 
tary Academy in 1829, ranking second in a class 
of forty-six. At the beginning of the Mexican 
war he was assigned as chief engineer of the 
army under Gen. Wool, with the rank of cap- 
tain. His abilities and conduct won the respect 
of Gen. Winfield Scott in this war, and that 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 159 

general's confidence in him never faltered, for 
as late as 1861 he declared that, if given an op- 
portunity, the Virginian would prove himself 
the greatest captain of history. He was thrice 
brevetted during the contest with Mexico. 

He was appointed lieutenant colonel in 1855, 
and in 1859 was ordered to Washington and 
placed in command of the force sent to capture 
John Brown at Harper's Ferry. 

When Virginia, on April 20, 1861, adopted 
an ordinance of secession, Lee resigned his com- 
mission in the United States army. He did 
not think secession the proper remedy for 
Southern grievances, but, writing to his sister 
about that time, he said: "With all my devotion 
to the Union and the feeling of loyalty and 
duty as an American citizen, I have not been 
able to make up my mind to raise my hand against 
my relatives, my children, my home. I have 
therefore resigned my commission in the army, 
and, save in defense of my native State — with 
the sincere hope that my poor services may 
never be needed — I hope I may never be called 
upon to draw my sword." 

During the early months his services were not 
conspicuous, but in the autumn of 1861 he was 
sent to South Carolina and planned the defen- 
sive lines that proved successful till about the 
end of the war. This led to his promotion, and 



160 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

caused him to be charged, under the direction 
of the President, with the conduct of military 
operations in the armies of the Confederacy. It 
was soon seen that the appointment was wise. 

During the seven days' battles around Rich- 
mond his capacity as manager and strategist 
came prominently into display. One of his 
methods had been an offensive defense, and he 
resolved on it in this series of contests. With 
an overwhelming force the Union general, Mc- 
Clellan, thought of attacking Richmond. In- 
stead of awaiting the attack, Lee determined to 
protect Richmond by dislodging the enemy. 
The result of the seven days' battles was a com- 
plete victory for Lee. The siege of Richmond 
was raised, McClellan's splendid army was 
driven back, and President Lincoln issued a 
call for three hundred thousand more men. 
The Union force was one hundred and five 
thousand soldiers; that of Lee, eighty thousand. 
Following this victory, Lee resolved to put 
Washington in danger, believing that McClel- 
lan would be recalled from the South, He 
succeeded. As Fiske admits, "from standing 
on the defensive, and hard pressed in front of 
their own capital, the Confederates had been 
able to march into their enemy's country, over- 
throwing an army on their way, and to put the 
national capital on its defense." 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 161 

From this movement on till the close of the 
war Lee was the reliance of the Southern peo- 
ple, "the supreme object of their devotion." 

It would be impossible in this paper to give 
in detail the battles which proved the military 
prowess of the eminent Southern commander. 
Particular mention is made of the seven days' 
battles and the demonstration against Washing- 
ton — resulting in reversing the moral situation — 
to show his ability as a soldier and the incipien- 
cy of the whole South's affection and confidence. 
In the great battles which followed, his direc- 
tions were the part of wisdom, but were not 
always followed. If they had been, the result 
of the contest would probably have been dif- 
ferent. From the time he took command at 
Richmond on through the sanguinary battles of 
the second Manassas, Sharpsburg, Fredericks- 
burg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, the Wilder- 
ness, and Cold Harbor, his splendid military 
genius was apparent. He did all that any com- 
mander could have done with the available re- 
sources. 

In the last year of the war there was a gen- 
eral desire in the South to take the control of 
the armies from President Davis. Lee was 
commander in chief under the President's direc- 
tions, and the people wanted him commander in 
chief without direction of Mr. Davis. The bill 
11 



162 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

creating the office was passed and approved by 
the Executive, and on February 5, 1865, a gen- 
eral order from the adjutant general's office di- 
rected Gen. Lee to enter upon his new duties. 

But it was too late. If this had been done 
sooner, it would have availed much. The South 
was already defeated. 

His methods in war were: To make an offen- 
sive defense, as stated. He believed that in 
planning, all dangers should be seen; in execu- 
tion, none, unless very formidable. Having the,, 
intuition to see the purpose of the foe, he had 
the power of rapid combination to oppose 
prompt resistance. In strategy he was equal to 
the world's greatest warriors. 

Perhaps his chief error was in giving too much 
discretion to his lieutenants on critical occasions. 

Notwithstanding all far-fetched criticisms, 
however, the assertion of a living Northern histo- 
rian remains true, that he was the ablest general 
developed by the civil war. Not less worthy 
of mention in connection with his military qual- 
ities is the assertion of Gen. Fitzhugh Lee, who 
knew him so well, that he was as devout a 
Christian soldier as Sir Henry Havelock. 

More than a third of a century has passed 
since Lee proved his right to rank with the 
greatest and since his surrender to overwhelm- 
ing numbers at Appomattox. The passions en- 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 163 

gendered then have in a measure died away, and 
it is a credit to American love of worth and ap- 
preciation of true greatness that all sections of 
the Union seem ready to proudly boast that the 
valor and ability of Lee and his generals belong 
to the history of America more than to a sec- 
tion. 



THOMAS J. (STONEWALL) JACKSON. 




Robert E. Lee and 
Thomas J. Jackson are 
classed as the greatest 
generals of the American 
civil war by a large num- 
ber of military critics. 
Considering this fact, it 
is of interest to note how 
they stood in the milita- 
ry training school. Lee 
was second in a class of 
forty-six, while it is said of Jackson that he 
never reached a high grade. The circumstances 
seem to show that as colleges, for all their ad- 
vantages, do not make geniuses, the commander 
is to some extent born. Forrest is another in- 
stance of this kind. 

Jackson displayed gallantry in the Mexican 
war like- Lee, having been twice breveted for 
good conduct at Churubusco and Chapultepec. 
He remained in the United States army from 
1846 to 1851, when he accepted the chair of 
Philosophy and Artillery Tactics in the Virginia 
Military Institute. It is said that as a teacher 
(164) 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 165 

his success was not great, though he was distin- 
guished for faithfulness in the performance of 
his duties. He was also noted for his earnest- 
ness in religious matters. 

By the way, speaking of his religious earnest- 
ness recalls the fact that this distinguished 
Washington and Lee. They were three great 
Christian warriors. Without a desire to detract 
from the character of the chieftains of any other 
section, attention must be called to the fact 
that this trait has not been a characteristic of 
any of the great opponents of the Southerners in 
the civil war. As the Christian is proud to 
number Gladstone, the most distinguished citi- 
zen of the world at one time, among those who 
professed a simple faith, so it is a pleasure to 
contemplate the piety of our greatest warriors; 
for, as Washington suggested in his farewell 
address, religion and morality are the pillars of 
human happiness. 

A short time after the secession of Virginia, 
Jackson took command of the Confederate 
troops collected at Harper's Ferry. Later he 
was relieved by Gen. Joseph E. Johnston, and 
then became commander of a brigade in the army 
of that general. 

In the battle of Bull Run the Confeder- 
ate line had been turned, the troops holding it 
being driven back for some distance. It seemed 



166 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

for a while that disaster was certain, though 
Johnston was hurrying up troops to support 
our left. Jackson's brigade was the first to 
get into position. It checked the enemy, and 
the faltering troops rallied. In this crisis Gen. 
Bernard E. Bee, in appealing to his men, cried: 
"See, there is Jackson standing like a stone 
wall! Rally on the Virginians!" This gave 
Jackson a new name, and his stand aided mate- 
rially in giving the South that great victory. 
He was made major general for his conduct on 
this occasion. 

One of his greatest campaigns was that known 
as the Valley campaign, which was designed to 
prevent the Federals from reenforcing the army 
which threatened Richmond. This was the of- 
fensive-defensive idea of Lee, but the carrying 
out of the plan was left to Jackson. In a re- 
cent excellent work on the civil war by an En- 
glishman, Col. G. F. R. Henderson, the part of 
Jackson in this campaign is conspicously set 
forth. "The swift maneuvers which surprised 
in succession his [Jackson's] various enemies 
emanated from himself alone," says this writer. 
"It was his brain that conceived the march by 
Medium's Station to McDowell, the march that 
surprised Fremont and bewildered Banks. It 
was his brain that conceived the rapid transfer 
of the Valley army from one side of the Massa- 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 167 

nuttons to the other, the march that surprised 
Kelly and drove Banks in panic to the Poto- 
mac. It was his brain that conceived the double 
victory of Cross Keys and Port Republic; and 
if Lee's strategy was brilliant, that displayed 
by Jackson in the minor theater of war was no 
less masterly. The instructions he received at 
the end of April, before he moved against Mil- 
roy, were simply to the effect that a successful 
blow at Banks might have the happiest results. 
But such a blow was not easy. Banks was 
strongly posted and numerically superior to 
Jackson, while Fremont in equal strength was 
threatening Staunton. Taking instant advan- 
tage of the separation of the hostile columns, 
Jackson struck at Milroy, and, having checked 
Fremont, returned to the Valley to find Banks 
retreating. At that moment he received or- 
ders from Lee to threaten Washington. With- 
out an instant's hesitation he marched north- 
ward. By May 23, had the Federals received 
warning of his advance, they might have con- 
centrated fifty thousand men at Strasburg and 
Front Royal; or, while Banks was reenforced, 
McDowell might have moved on to Gordons- 
ville, cutting Jackson's line of retreat on Rich- 
mond. But Jackson took as little account of 
numbers as did Cromwell. Concealing his 
march with his usual skill, he dashed with his 



168 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

sixteen thousand men into the midst of his en- 
emies. Driving Banks before him, and well 
aware that Fremont and McDowell were con- 
verging in his rear, he advanced boldly on 
Harper's Ferry, routed Saxton's outposts, and 
remained for two days on the Potomac, with 
sixty two thousand Federals within a few days' 
march. Then, retreating rapidly up the Valley, 
beneath the southern peaks of the Massanut- 
tons, he turned fiercely at bay; and the pursu- 
ing columns, numbering nearly twice his own, 
were thrust back with heavy loss at the very 
moment when they were combining to crush 
him. A week later, and he had vanished, and 
when he appeared on the Chickahominy, Banks, 
Fremont, and McDowell were still guarding the 
roads to Washington, and McClellan was wait- 
ing for McDowell. One hundred and seventy- 
five thousand men absolutely paralyzed by six- 
teen thousand! Only Napoleon's campaign of 
1814 affords a parallel to this extraordinary 
spectacle." 

On June 27, 1862, after uniting with Gen. 
Lee, he turned the scale of battle at Gaines's 
Mills, where Fitz- John Porter was overthrown, 
and took part in the operations following Gen. 
McClelian's retreat from around Richmond. 
He forced Gen. Pope to let go the Rappahan- 
nock, and kept him at bay until the arrival of 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 169 

Lee's forces, when the Union general was de- 
feated in the second battle of Bull Run. In 
the Maryland campaign, two weeks later, he 
brought about the capture of Harper's Ferry, 
with thirteen hundred prisoners and seventy 
cannon. It all reflected credit on his great fit- 
ness as a commander. 

It was a matter of course, after these brilliant 
exploits, that promotion should follow. He 
was made lieutenant general, and with this 
rank took part in the battle of Fredericksburg. 
His last movements were made in May, 1863. 
On the 1st of that month he drove Hooker into 
the wilderness around Chancellorsville. He 
then attempted a flank movement on the Fed- 
eral army under Lee's order. After reaching 
Howard's Corps, which held the right of Hook- 
er's army, he routed the corps in thirty min- 
utes, and was pressing the troops sent to its as- 
sistance back toward Chancellorsville when he 
was checked by a powerful artillery fire. That 
night, between eight and nine o'clock, with 
a small party he rode beyond his lines to 
reconnoiter. On his return he and his par- 
ty were mistaken for Federal cavalry and 
fired upon by Lane's Confederate Brigade. 
Jackson was wounded in three places, and, 
pneumonia setting up, he died in a few days. 
His death was a greater loss to the cause 



170 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

for which he struggled than would have been 
thousands of the common soldiery. He had 
won the veneration of the army, the love of 
the Southern people, and the dread of the en- 
emy, McClellan at one time having telegraphed: 
"I do not like Jackson's movements. He will 
suddenly appear when least expected." 

The tribute of Col. Henderson, the writer 
above quoted, is deserved. Says he: "Self-sac- 
rifice and the single heart are the attributes 
the Anglo-Saxon race most delights to honor; 
and chief among its accepted heroes are those 
soldier-saints who, sealing their devotion with 
their lives, have won 

Death's royal purple in the foernan's lines. 

So from his narrow grave on the green hillside 
at Lexington Jackson speaks with voice more 
powerful than if, passing peacefully away in 
the fullness of years and honors, he had found 
a resting place in some proud sepulcher erect- 
ed by a victorious and grateful commonwealth. 
His creed may not be ours; but in whom shall 
we find a firmer faith, a mind more humble, a 
sincerity more absolute? He had his tempta- 
tions, like the rest of us. His passions were 
strong; his temper was hot; forgiveness never 
came easily to him; and he loved power. . . . 
And if in his nature there were great capacities 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 171 

for good, there were none the less, had it been 
perverted, great capacities for evil. Fearless 
and strong, self-dependent and ambitious, he 
had within him the making of a Napoleon, yet 
his name is without spot or blemish. From 
his boyhood onward until he died on the Rap- 
pahannock, he was the very model of a Chris- 
tian gentleman: 

E'n as he trod that day to God, so walked he from 

his birth, 
In simpleness, and gentleness, and honor, and clean 

mirth. 




ENOCH M. MARVIN. 

Few ministers of any s^" 

Church have risen to the 
highest position who 
were embarrassed with J 
such untoward circum- [' 
stances as Bishop E. M. \ ? 
Marvin was surrounded 
by. His career, his 
struggles against adver- 
sity, his trust in a direct- 
ing Providence, and his 
final signal triumph are not only to the glory of 
the Creator, but a legacy of instruction to future 
generations. 

He was a descendant of the celebrated Cotton 
Mather, of New England, of whose erudition it 
is averred that there was scarcely any book in 
existence with which he was not acquainted, and 
whose literary fame reached across the ocean 
and secured him honorary membership in the 
literary societies of the Old World. He was 
born of j>oor parents in Missouri, June 12, 
1823. He early showed an aptitude for learning, 
and was an unusually bright boy. Like Cotton 
(172) 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 173 

Mather, his memory was wonderful. It is re- 
lated as an instance of his power of memory 
that when quite a small boy he attended church 
where a minister known as Uncle Billy McCon- 
nell preached, and on returning home his moth- 
er requested him to relate to her all that he 
could recall of the sermon. It was customary 
in those days in his section for a preacher to 
stand behind a chair to preach, and he took the 
same position on the occasion mentioned and an- 
nounced the text, then proceeded to repeat the 
sermon from memory, much to the astonishment 
of the family. When he had finished the sermon 
he said, "Let us pray;" but his mother inter- 
posed by saying, "That will do, Mather," not 
wishing anything smacking of mockery in prayer. 
He taught school when young, years before 
he reached his majority. Though reared under 
Baptist influences, he joined the Methodist 
Church, and was admitted on trial in the Mis- 
souri Conference in the autumn of 1841. "He 
was not present, fortunately," says a biogra- 
pher. "Some preachers would have voted on 
the cut of his clothes and the un-cut of his 
hair. The presiding elder, who presented the 
application, was not prepossessed, and, withal, 
was a phlegmatic man. The history of the ap- 
plication was pro forma. He had no friend at 
court." It is sufficient to say of his first years 



174 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

as a preacher that he agreeably disappointed 
those who had little faith in his usefulness, and 
that his progress was rapid. 

When the war came up Marvin's sympathies 
were with the South. Southern sympathizers 
were threatened if they did not take the oath of 
allegiance to the authority of the United States, 
but he determined not to take the oath. The 
thought of being forced to take it was sufficient 
to induce him, among other reasons, to -pass 
through the Federal lines in 1862 and go far- 
ther South. Arriving there, he felt called to 
preach to the Southern army, though he had no 
connection with it by military appointment. 
He remained in this capacity three years, receiv- 
ing his support from the voluntary contribu- 
tions of friends. He was not joined by his 
family until the spring of 1865, when his wife 
was permitted to pass through the lines by 
President Lincoln. 

For some months after the surrender, and 
during the reconstruction era, Marvin and his 
family remained in an almost impoverished 
condition, although he was one of the best 
preachers of his day. He was often under fear 
of being arrested by the military authorities 
hectoring the South, too. Two incidents are 
related of this time. On one occasion he 
saw a file of Union soldiers coming into his 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 175 

yard, and supposed that they were going to ar- 
rest him on some trumped-up charge. He was 
surprised that they were detailed to invite him 
to preach. This led to a friendly acquaintance 
with certain officers, and he afterwards face- 
tiously remarked to them, "not to press recon- 
struction too fast, but allow the S.outhern peo- 
ple a little time to sull!" Again, when pressed 
to accept the editorship of a paper, the salary 
from which would relieve his family, he said: 
"As long as God gives me and mine coarse 
clothes and corn bread, I'll preach the gosjjel." 

In 1866 it was considered advisable to add to 
the number of bishops of the Methodist Episco- 
pal Church, South, and the number of addition- 
al was fixed at four. It seemed to be con- 
ceded that a man west of the Mississippi should 
be one of the new bishops, and Enoch M. Mar- 
vin was elected without his solicitation. He 
had been roughing it in Texas, and one day 
after he supposed that the election of bishops 
was over at the New Orleans session of Confer- 
ence, he arrived in the Crescent City. Rev. 
Dr. Deems, who was the first to meet him, gave 
an account of his interview with Marvin in 
Leslie's Sunday Magazine. Meeting Marvin, he 
said: "Why, Bishop Marvin, where are you 
from?" 

Marvin looked surprised and displeased. 



176 GEEAT SOUTHERNERS. 

"Did you get the telegram?" asked Dr. 
Deems. "You were elected bishop yesterday." 

Marvin was deeply agitated, but in the gen- 
eral conversation revived. 

He was the first man in his Church who had 
been elected to the episcopacy with a full suit 
of beard, and that evening it was suggested that 
the beard was an offense to some of the breth- 
ren, but Marvin said they would have to stand 
it, as they had elected him in his beard. 

"Yes," it was facetiously insisted, "but re- 
member that you were not present when you 
were elected. I doubt whether they could have 
been persuaded to elect you if they had seen 
what a homely man you are, shaved or bearded." 

When elected Bishop Marvin was forty-three 
years of age, and was the youngest member of 
the college. 

In 1876 he began a missionary tour around 
the world. On his return he seemed even more 
eminently fitted for usefulness, but he died in 
November, 1877, in his prime, and when, as 
Bishop McTyeire says, "never so useful, so 
widely known, or so much beloved." 

Bishop Marvin was a student of books, the 
range of his studies being marvelous. He pre- 
pared his sermons carefully, though he wrote 
none save those that were prepared for the 
press. Personally he was modest and retiring. 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 177 

He was a model in the purity of his character, 
the steadfastness of his devotion to his race, and 
in his unselfishness. His desire through his 
short but glorious life seemed truly to be to 
"allure to brighter worlds, and lead the way." 
He published a volume of sermons and a 
book of his travels in the East. 
12 



WILLIAM E. MUNSEY. 




There has hardly been 
a time, perhaps, when 
there were not what the 
stump speakers call "ca- 
lamity howlers." Since 
Homer there have always 
been men to take the 
pessimistic view of Me- 
res, who in 1598 in The 
Witfs Treasury, while 
complimenting the poet Drayton, spoke of 
"these declining and corrupt times, when there 
is nothing but roguery in villainous man." 
Smollet in 1770 made one of his characters refer 
to "these times of dullness and degeneracy." 
There are no great poets and painters; there 
are no superb actors since Booth and Barrett 
passed away! All these assertions are but 
echoes of criticisms made when Shakespeare 
lived and Hume wrote and Garrick and Forrest 
acted their roles. Oratory even is said to be 
declining, while the public has reached a time 
when eloquence cannot move it, according to 
the chronic complainers. 
(178) 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 179 

But the fact is, there will hardly come a pe- 
riod when oratory will not be potent in swaying 
men, or when it will fail to be attractive. The 
galleries of the legislative halls are not packed 
when the dry, hard, and insignificant speaker has 
the floor; facts and figures are necessary in their 
place, but a volume of statistics is not as pleasant 
to read as the eloquent lines of Byron's "Childe 
Harold," or Montaigne's sentences — which some 
one said would bleed if they were cut. The 
eloquent minister seldom has to preach to emp- 
ty pews. Eloquence is potent, for it is born of 
earnestness and deep conviction, and a fire that 
heats those in proximity. 

William E. Munsey attained celebrity as a 
pulpit orator of great power — won the admira- 
tion of the public, the young should know, 
against drawbacks greater than those with which 
Demosthenes had to contend. He was born of 
poor parents; he had but a few months' training 
in the schoolroom; and, as hinted, he had to 
struggle with many disadvantages in person, 
manner, and voice. His body was long and 
gaunt; his face was sallow and bloodless, his 
head small, round, and thinly covered with a 
whitish hair; his voice was without a trace of 
oratorical power; his gestures were seldom help 
ful, being usually made with the right hand, the 
fingers closed as if holding a pen. But compar- 



180 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

ing his pictured face with that of Edgar A. Poe, 
cannot there be seen similarity of features, in- 
dicating the same imaginative power, a half- 
perceptible gleam of the soul through the eyes? 

It is believed by some that our best orators 
have been born amid the lofty grandeur of the 
mountains. Dr. Munsey was born in the moun- 
tains of Virginia in the year 1833. He was 
used to heavy farm work, and after a hard 
day's toil often carried wood on his back near- 
ly a mile to make the evening fire. But dur- 
ing his early struggles he was possessed of a de- 
sire for knowledge, and he read with greedy 
avidity every book that fell into his hands. It 
is related that, when plowing, he would place 
his book at the end of the furrow, and when he 
came to it would pause and read a few moments 
and then resume plowing, fixing the thoughts 
in his mind. He was proving that where there's 
a will there's a way. 

So he studied and absorbed, until at an early 
age his brain was a storehouse of knowledge. 
When he became a member of the Holston Con- 
ference in his young manhood, he at once at- 
tracted attention, and after the civil war, join- 
ing the Baltimore Conference, his fame spread 
far and wide as preacher and lecturer. The 
Richmond Christian Advocate, commenting on 
the delivery at that time of his lecture on man, 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 181 

says: "He spoke as if he bad been a professor 
in every branch of science for a lifetime. He 
soared amid clouds and lightning and thunder 
and tempests; he was as familiar with anatomy 
as if he were a Sir Charles Bell; with mental phe- 
nomena as if he had been a John Locke; with 
mythology as if he had been born a Greek and 
had lived in Greece a thousand years. After get- 
ting into his theme he rushed on with the speed 
of an Arabian courser, scarcely pausing to take 
breath to the last sentence of his gorgeous pero- 
ration." 

He was a poet and philosopher, an orator 
and a logician combined. One has only to read 
his sermons to perceive this. While his elo- 
quence charmed, his learning attracted as much. 
His sermons are filled with such expressions as 
these: "The Church has withstood the muta- 
tions of fortune, the desolating tread of ages 
and the disintegration and downfall of dynas- 
ties, the ravages of famine and the wasting 
scourge of the pestilence. It outlived the 
flood, the confusion of languages, the brick- 
yards of Goshen; it outlived the temple, out- 
lived the Jews, outlived the astrological lore of 
the Chaldeans, the mythology of Greece and 
Rome. It will extend its triumphs . . . till all 
the governments be swallowed up and lost in an 
all-absorbing, overshadowing, and universal 



182 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

theocracy, till the Hindoo with his Shaster and 
Veda, the Parsee with his Zend-Avesta, the 
Buddhist with his Bedagat, the Jewish rabbin 
with his Talmud, the Mohammedan with his Ko- 
ran shall all come trooping up and pile the vol- 
umes of their faith in one grand pyre at its 
threshold. Angels will kindle it, and the curl- 
ing flames, wreathing away into heaven, will an- 
nounce to the universe the completion of its vic- 
tories and the perfection of its glories." 

Tennyson, in "Locksley Hall Sixty Years 
After," sings of the resurrection: 

Truth for truth, and good for good ! The good, the 
true, the pure, the just; 

Take the charm ' ' forever ' ' from them, and they crum- 
ble into dust. 

Not less beautiful is Munsey's prose: "Tell 
the bereaved (fathers, mothers, widows, chil- 
dren) that there will be no resurrection, and a 
universal shriek will rend the air and crack the 
vault of heaven till God hears and feels and an- 
gels weep. Earth will put on weeds of mourn- 
ing, and, like Rachel of old, go down to the 
judgment weeping for her children." 

One more quotation — a description of the 
state of a lost soul: "Immortal soul! lost in 
boundless, bottomless, infinite darkness, fly on. 
Thou shalt never find company till the ghost of 
eternity will greet thee over the grave of God, 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 183 

and thou shalt never find rest till thou art able 
to fold thy wings on the gravestone of thy 
Maker." 

There are various instruments in the hands of 
God to convert men. Of the acts among ob- 
scure ways to strengthen the fallen, the kind 
words to cheer the burdened soul, it has been 
praisefully said that 

These be the noblest deeds of all, and these the 
sweetest songs; 

but there has been need for the eloquent pic- 
tures of eternal rest, the terrible portrayal of 
the punishment that awaits the transgressor, and 
there is no doubt that Dr. Munsey was instru- 
mental in turning men's feet into the narrow 
way and in bringing moments of comfort to 
the heart of the world. He died in 1877. 



ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS. 




During and for years 
after the civil war one 
of the best- known names 
in the South was that 
of Alexander H. Ste- 
phens. He was born in 
Georgia in 1812, and 
through life appeared a 
bundle of contradictions, 
though, paradoxical as 
it may appear, he acted 
always from principle, and not through a vac- 
illating disposition. One of the earliest acts 
proving his honor and independence was the 
paying back of the money a wealthy gentleman 
expended as a matter of charity on his educa- 
tion. 

After reading law only two months he was 
admitted to the bar, and was congratulated by 
Senator William H. Crawford and Judge Lump- 
kin on the best examination they had ever 
heard. He lived on $6 a month and saved $400 
by his practice the first year. His reputation 
as an advocate was made within a few years; 
from his income he repurchased his father's old 
(184) 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 185 

farm, and bought the estate known as Liberty 
Hall. He never married, owing to a disappoint- 
ment in love encountered by him during his 
young manhood. 

While he believed firmly in State rights, he 
strove against the doctrine of nullification. On 
account of his opposition to the doctrine that was 
still popular notwithstanding Calhoun's failure 
as its champion and Jackson's threat to coerce 
South Carolina, he met with bitter opposition in 
his canvass in 1836 for the office of Representative 
to the Georgia Legislature, but was elected. He 
proved his ability in his first speech by securing 
the passage of the appropriation for the first rail- 
way from Atlanta to Chattanooga, which was 
the property of Georgia. Another measure which 
succeeded through his advocacy at the session 
was the securing of a charter for the Macon 
Female College, the first in the world for the 
regular graduation of young women in classics 
and the sciences. 

He had been noted from childhood for his cour- 
age, notwithstanding his delicate constitution — 
"the courage that comes not from principle 
or duty," says Henry W. Cleveland, "but from 
utter indifference to consequences." In 1848 he 
had a difficulty on the piazza of an Atlanta ho- 
tel with Judge Cone. It grew out of a political 
controversy. Cone stabbed and cut Stephens 



186 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. * 

fearfully with a knife, and cried: "Now re- 
tract, or I'll cut your throat! " Stephens, bleed- 
ing and almost dying, replied, "Never! cut!" 
and grasped the descending knife blade in his 
hand. He recovered in time to make a speech 
in favor of Zachary Taylor for President, his 
carriage being drawn to the stand by his ad- 
mirers. 

He was always opposed to secession. He 
was in 1850 one of the authors of the "Georgia 
platform," the first resolve of which was, "That 
we hold the American Union secondary in im- 
portance only to the rights and principles it was 
designed to perpetuate." In 1860 he made 
speeches against withdrawing from the Union, 
though when his State withdrew he considered 
it his duty to follow. 

He was instrumental in killing the Whig 
party, of which he had long been a member. 
On the nominations of Franklin Pierce and Gen. 
Scott at Baltimore members of the Whig party 
became dissatisfied over the position of the can- 
didates on a compromise or settlement on the 
slavery question. Meredith P. Gentry (the 
great Tennessee orator), Robert Toombs, Ste- 
phens, and a few others published a card July 
3, 1852, giving their reasons for not supporting 
Scott, who did not approve of the settlement. 
Stephens wrote the card, and it killed the Whig 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 



187 



party. Daniel Webster was nominated without 
a party. He died before the election, but Ste- 
phens and Toombs voted for him anyhow. 

In 1859 Stephens retired from the United 
States Congress, and in a farewell speech in one 
of the Southern cities intimated that the Afri- 
can slave trade might have to be reopened. He 
also said after resigning: "I saw there was 
bound to be a smash- up on the road, and re- 
solved to jump off at the first station" — having 
reference, of course, to the coming conflict be- 
tween the North and South. 

In 1861, when the attempt at secession was 
made, he became Vice President of the South- 
ern Confederacy, and was as loyal as Hon. Jef- 
ferson Davis to the Confederacy. In 1865 he 
was at the head of the Peace Commission on 
the part of the lost cause in the Hampton Roads 
conference, and in 1866 made a powerful recon- 
struction speech and plea for the negroes. 

A good story is told to show that Stephens 
was not averse to a little humor now and then. 
Thaddeus Stevens, the great Northern radical, 
and Stephens met at Appomattox once and 
talked about the war. 

"Well, Stephens," said the Northerner, "how 
do you Rebels feel after being licked by the 
Yankees?" 

"We feel, I suppose, a good deal as Laza- 



188 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

rus did," replied the ex-Vice President of the 
Confederacy. 

"How is that?" 

"Why, Thad, poor Lazarus was licked by 
the dogs, was he not?" 

After the war Stephens was elected to the 
United States Senate, but was not permitted to 
take his seat. He was elected then to the Low- 
er House of Congress in 1874, and continuously 
elected for eight years thereto, until his resigna- 
tion in 1882. 

Stephens devoted much of his time after the 
close of hostilities to writing histories. His 
first effort was "The "War between the States," 
in two volumes. This was followed by a 
"School History of the United States," which 
is very impartial and valuable for the young 
readers of the South, doing justice to the heroic 
people of his section. Still later he published 
a "History of the United States," which proved 
a failure financially. 

In 1882 he was elected Governor of Georgia, 
and made one of the best executives that State 
has ever had. 



PAUL H. HAYNE. 




A NUMBER Of poetS 

of more than ordinary 
merit drew attention 
to the South in the sev- 
enties and eighties, not 
to mention those at the 
foot of Parnassus like 
Frank O. Tichnor, 
whose lyrics, "Little 
Giffin" and "The Vir- 
ginians, " are anion g the 
prettiest in American literature. Margaret J. 
Preston, Abram J. Ryan, and Paul H. Hayne 
have done work that will keep them in the pub- 
lic mind for years. The last-named has left a 
greater quantity of work as a comment on his 
industry than the others, and he is entitled to 
rank higher as a poet for fertility and finish. 

Paul H. Hayne came of revolutionary stock — 
from patriots who gave their blood for the lib- 
erties of the colonies. His uncle, Robert Y. 
Hayne, was a statesman and orator, who matched 
his strength with Webster, and the discussion 
they had in the Senate may be classed among 
the ablest which touched upon the questions of 
the Constitution and the Union. Robert was, in 

(189) 



190 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

addition to his service in the United States Sen- 
ate, at one time Governor of South Carolina. 

As soon as Paul graduated he connected him- 
self with the journalism of Charleston, S. C. 
His first volume of poems was published by 
Ticknor & Co., of Boston, in 1855, and since 
that time, up to his death, in 1888, he had four 
or five other volumes issued. 

The war ruined him financially, and he deter- 
mined to leave Charleston, exile himself in the 
pine barrens of Georgia, and devote himself en- 
tirely to poetry. His wife was the daughter of an 
eminent French physician, who received a gold 
medal from Napoleon III. for services under the 
first Napoleon at the battle of Leipsic. Beauti- 
ful, cultured, and proud, but with steadfast de- 
votion, she took up the new life, and was such 
an inspiration to her husband as were the wives 
of Owen Meredith and Tennyson to those poets. 
They had only one child, William H. Hayne, 
who since his parents' death has resided in Au- 
gusta, and is himself a poet of jiromise, one whose 
Aldrichlike fancies are frequently seen in the 
leading periodicals of the North. 

Hayne's new home was a very poor cottage; 
but, surrounded by love and feeling that he was 
dependent on no one, the years were not unhap- 
py. He is perhaps the first and only American 
who has devoted himself exclusively to poetry 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 191 

for a living. While he might have excelled as a 
prosist (his memoir of Timrod proves this), he 
did not indulge much in what may be called here 
diversified writing. During his later years he 
kept up a correspondence with the greatest liv- 
ing poets of England and his own country. 

His long poems, such as "The Wife of Brit- 
tany," have been justly admired, though they 
are somewhat lacking in warmth. Of his son- 
nets Maurice Thompson, the well-known poet 
and critic, says: "I could pick out twenty of 
them the equal of almost any in the language." 
Perhaps he is best in his simpler and tenderer 
lyrics. The poets of the South have all proven 
especially successful in the writing of lyrics. 

During the days of Hayne's prosperity, when 
he resided in Charleston, that city was perhaps 
the literary center of the South, and the reputa- 
tion it received from the part its citizens took in 
letters shows the value of literature toward rais- 
ing a section in the estimation of the public. 
Simms and Timrod, Legare and Hayne were the 
progressive literary spirits then. 

When only twenty-three years of age Hayne 
was made editor of HusselPs Magazine. This 
was a tribute to his genius, already making it- 
self felt. When a mere child he read the old 
dramatists and the earlier poets. His study of 
the literature of the Elizabethan age was cease- 



192 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

less, and he was as much saturated with its spirit 
as Austin Dobson with French literature of the 
eighteenth century. Mrs. Preston, in a sketch, 
says: "No Southern poet has ever written so 
much or done so much to give a literary impulse 
to his section; so that he well deserves the title 
that has been bestowed upon him by his English 
friends, as well as by his own people, the 'Lau- 
reate of the South."' 

Among his sonnets this, entitled "October," 
is much admired: 

The passionate summer's dead! the sky's aglow 
With roseate flushes of matured desire; 

The winds at eve are musical and low 
As sweeping chords of a lamenting lyre 
Far up among the pillared clouds of fire, 

Whose pomp of strange procession upward rolls 

With gorgeous blazoning of pictured scrolls 
To celebrate the summer's past renown. 
Ah me! how regally the heavens look down, 

O'ershadowing beautiful autumnal woods 

And harvest fields with hoarded increase brown 

And deep-toned majesty of golden floods, 
That raise their solemn dirges to the sky, 
To swell the purple pomp that floateth by. 

This is one of the prettiest of the tributes to 
the pioneer poet, William Cullen Bryant: 

Lo, there he lies, our patriarch poet, dead! 

The solemn angel of eternal peace 
Has waved a wand of mystery o'er his head, 

Touched his strong heart, and bade his pulses cease. 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 193 

Behold, in marble quietude he lies ! 

Pallid and cold, divorced from earthly breath, 
With tranquil brow, lax hands, and dreamless eyes; 

Yet the closed lips would seem to smile on death. 

Well may they smile, for death to such as he 
Brings purer freedom, loftier thought and aim, 

And in grand truce with immortality, 

Lifts to song's fadeless heaven his starlike fame. 

Had Paul H. Hayne been a resident of the 
North, no doubt the generous lovers of literary 
excellence of that section would have given him 
the prominence he deserves. As a poet he should 
rank with Stedman in America .and with Wil- 
liam Morris in England. There is color, orig- 
inality, a great wealth of imagery, and finish in 
his creations, but he was somewhat lacking in 
passion. A complete illustrated edition of his 
poems was published in 1882 by a Boston firm. 
Some of his best lines were written after its ap- 
pearance, and are uncollected. 
13 



HENRY TIMROD. 



Blessings be with them, and eternal praise, 
Who gave us nobler lives and nobler cares — 
The poets who on earth have made ns heirs 

Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays. 

— Wordsworth. 

If any Northern sing- 
er deserving the title of 
poet has "been allowed 
to pass his days in 
wretched poverty, dis- 
ease, and neglect, with- 
out his people .giving 
him their patronage no- 
bly and generously, the 
fact has not been put on 
record. The Southern 
poets Poe, Timrocl, Lanier, and Hayne found 
life anything but a round of enjoyment; it was 
more nearly ' ' a cry between the silences. " They 
were gifted. If life had been made less burden- 
some, who can imagine what they might have 
achieved? 

At a social gathering in Boston, in September, 

1880, Longfellow, alluding to Charleston, S. C, 

said: "To have been the birthplace of Henry 

Timrod is a distinct honor. The day will surely 

(194) 




GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 195 

come when his poems will have a place in every 
cultivated home in the United States." 

The Century Magazine in 1898, reviewing his 
poetry, declared: "Now that the people of the 
South are raising a memorial to Timrod's fame, 
the suggestion seems a proper one to make that 
the American people share in the honor, for he 
was a true American poet, and worthy to stand 
in the narrow space that belongs to the best." 

Henry Timrod was educated for the bar; but, 
being timid, he soon discovered that he would 
probably never become a successful advocate. 
He had predilections for literature, too, and this 
led him from a profession not to his liking. His 
first volume of poems appeared in. 1860, and the 
fact that the excitement between the North and 
South was on accounts for the limited notice it 
received, for it was a creditable first volume. 

The poet very naturally sympathized with the 
South in the war, and some of his best poems 
were written between 1861 and 1865. Among 
these are "Ethnogenesis" and "Carolina." They 
were so well received by his people that they 
thought of bringing out in England an illus- 
trated edition of his poems. The scheme, how- 
ever, fell through, to Timrod's great disappoint- 
ment. 

Awhile before the war he became associate 
editor and part owner of a daily newspaper at 



196 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

Columbia, S. C, which promised a moderate 
support, and he married. Then Columbia was 
given up to Sherman's troops, and of course his 
property was destroyed. His life from then on 
was wretched. There was no means of employ- 
ment open to him; his child had died, and his 
constitution, always frail, was broken down. 
In a letter to a friend in 1866 he wrote: "You 
ask me to tell you the story of the last year. I 
can embody it all in a few words: beggary, star- 
vation, death, bitter grief, utter want of hope." 

At length death came to him. Perhaps it was 
more a welcome than a farewell. A Charleston 
gentleman has described the funeral as follows: 
"As had been the man's death, sad and dreary, 
so was his funeral. A rude coffin, a few wreaths 
of wild flowers (the gloomy remnants of a bright 
summer), a very limited cortege of mourners, a 
brief and hurried service at the grave, and all 
was over. Perhaps the only difference between 
his interment and that of other colleagues of a 
like fortune was his burial in the cemetery of 
Trinity Episcopal Church, instead of potter's 
field." 

Timrod's death occurred in 1867, at the early 
age of thirty-eight. Man's inhumanity to man 
makes anarchists. He was an exception. There 
is nothing pessimistic in his poems, but they are 
sweet and helpful; and he builded better than 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 197 

he knew. Since his death his fame has been 
steadily broadening, certainly a good omen. 
When the second volume of his poems appeared, 
with a memoir by Paul H. Hayne, in 1873, it 
went through three editions, and would have con- 
tinued selling but for the failure of the publish- 
ing house which had brought out the volume. A 
splendid memorial edition of his complete works 
was issued by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. in 1899, 
and is meeting with a nattering sale. The critics 
have given it a most cordial reception. 



AUGUSTA EVANS WILSON. 



/' ' 




A few years before 
the civil war there 
sprang up some writers 
in the South who were 
as popular with the mil- 
lion and as much ap- 
preciated by enterpri- 
sing publishers as those 
of any other section of 
the United States. 
Among these were Eli- 
za A. Dupuy, who published fifteen or twenty 
novels; William Henry Peck, who was the most 
voluminous author in the South, except William 
Gilmore Simms, and the best paid; and Augusta 
Evans, afterwards Mrs. Wilson, whose popular- 
ity was still very great for a quarter of a century 
after the war. 

While this last-mentioned novelist's first effort 
was not a success, the appearance of "Beulah" 
in 1859 made her at once famous. Within a few 
months it went into ten or fifteen editions. Ev- 
erybody read it, and those who had not read it 
were considered behind the time. Its author in 
(198) 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 199 

her prime was styled the Charlotte Bronte of 
America. 

"Beulah" was followed by "Macaria," "St. 
Elmo," "Infelice," and, lastly, by "At the Mer- 
cy of Tiberius." She has written nothing since, 
and seems content to rest her fame on the works 
mentioned. 

There is so much fluctuation in literary taste, 
and critics are at so much variance, that it is 
hard to predict the ultimate place in literature 
of any writer. Dickens's popularity was instant 
and widespread, and the cultivated and unculti- 
vated admired him. The critics to-day say that 
he was slovenly in style, that his pathos repels 
and his humor excites ridicule, and that he is 
passing out of our consideration as an artistic 
story-teller. Byron was the most popular poet 
of his generation; then he fell into neglect; and 
now there is a "Byron revival," which will re- 
store him to his former place in our affections, 
as he deserves. After the success of "Beulah" 
Mrs. Wilson was, it is stated, paid fifteen thou- 
sand dollars for a novel as soon as completed. 
The appearance of a work from her pen was 
looked forward to by Americans with as much 
interest as they now manifest over the announce- 
ment of a new publication by Sarah Grand, Mrs. 
Ward, "John Oliver Hobbs," Thomas Hardy, 
Hall Came, or George W. Cable. Her romances 



200 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

were found In every home, and are still widely 
read. And yet the critics have no good words 
to utter relative to her ability as an artist; the 
most ambitious collections of literature do not 
contain anything from her writings. 

Whether or not she has exerted any influence 
in American literature may be a question; but 
there is no question about her having been- for 
a while as much the rage as the authors who are 
praised to-day. Recalling the treatment received 
by Byron and Dickens, her admirers can lay the 
"flattering unction " to their souls that the pub- 
lic may also return and pay homage to her efforts, 
while present- time idols may not feel too sure of 
permanent popularity. 

Mrs. Wilson was born near Columbus, Ga., 
but for several years has resided near Mobile. 




ANDREW JOHNSON. 

Self-made made men 
are generally well made 
for wear. Take him all 
in all, Andrew Johnson 
was not an exception to 
the rule. And of the 
various Presidents, he 
was perhaps more justly 
entitled to being called 
the "great commoner." 
He was of the common 
people, and the recollection of the fact never 
left his mind during the days of his greatest 
triumphs. 

Despite all the disadvantages of early life 
— the lack of training in the schoolroom, and 
the necessity for constant labor — he was elected 
to represent his district in Congress at the age 
of thirty- five, and was successively elected for 
ten years. During one of his later terms he 
made his speech in defense of the veto power, 
which was one of the forensic efforts of the 
first half of the century. He also worked un- 
ceasingly for the adoption of the homestead 

(201) 



202 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

law, and in other ways proved himself a states- 
man of more than average ability. In 1853 he 
announced himself a candidate for the governor- 
ship of Tennessee, and was elected. In his 
message he paid so much attention to the needs 
of the working people that he won the title of 
the "Mechanic Governor." 

When the Know-nothing movement was on 
foot, he made speeches against it, the vehe- 
mence of which was remembered for years. 
"Show me a Know-nothing," he is quoted as 
saying, "and I will show you a monster upon 
whose neck the foot of every honest man 
should tread!" He strangled that party move- 
ment in Tennessee. 

In his second canvass he was opposed by 
Meredith P. Gentry. Gentry was an orator 
also, but he was no match for Johnson, and was 
defeated, and the Whig party fell to pieces. 

In 1857 Johnson was elected to the United 
States Senate. In this body he renewed his 
efforts in behalf of the homestead law, which, 
it may be said, should not be confounded with 
the law championed by Thomas H. Benton. 
His pronounced Unionism estranged him from 
the slaveholders, and indeed it may be said that 
he was naturally or by early prejudices never in 
sympathy with the wealthy class. But he was 
always an unswerving Democrat. Even when 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 203 

nominated for Vice President on the Lincoln 
ticket, in his letter of acceptance he virtually 
disclaimed any departure from Democracy, but 
accepted on the duty of first helping to preserve 
the government. 

His speeches in the Senate against secession 
embittered the South, but of course pleased the 
North. With his customary vigor of expres- 
sion he said of the secessionists: "I would have 
them arrested and tried for treason, and, if con- 
victed, they should suffer the penalty of the 
law at the hands of the executioner." Where- 
upon while returning to Tennessee he was at- 
tacked at Liberty, Va. , by a mob, but kept them 
at bay with his pistol; at Lynchburg he was 
hooted and hissed, and was burned in effigy at 
other places. 

When appoiuted military governor of his 
State, in 1862, he was autocratic in the extreme. 
He wanted the City Council at Nashville to 
take the oath of allegiance to the Union, and 
when they refused he removed them; and he or- 
dered an assessment on the richer Southern sym- 
pathizers in behalf of the widows, wives, and 
children who were made poor, as he expressed 
it, by the "unholy and nefarious rebellion." 

When President Lincoln was assassinated, 
Johnson, being Vice President, was sworn in as 
President by Chief Justice Chase. "Treason is 



204 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

a crime, and must be punished," he said to a 
delegation of Illinois people, and it was thought 
in the South that he would be vindictive and 
not follow the humane policy toward the con- 
quered States which it is supjDosed Lincoln 
was inclined to. In his general amnesty to 
the citizens of the South he excepted all par- 
ticipants in the rebellion whose taxable proper- 
ty was over twenty thousand dollars — undoubt- 
edly an indication of his personal feeling. 

But after a while he began to prove that it 
was not his intention to crush the South, and 
this made enemies among the leaders of Con- 
gress, which was strongly Republican, not to 
say bloody, in the intensity of feeling against 
the South. He opposed certain measures to 
place the negroes where they might rule the 
whites. He used the veto power unhesitatingly, 
but measures that were conceived in hate and 
political selfishness were passed over his veto. 
Almost a score of such bills became laws, and, 
besides passing them over the President's veto, 
Congress attempted to deprive him of his pre- 
rogatives. Finally, on February 24, 1868, the 
House passed a resolution for Johnson's im- 
peachment. 

William Blount, one of Tennessee's first Sen- 
ators, had been impeached, and Aaron Burr had 
been tried for treason, but the impeachment of 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 205 

Andrew Johnson was up to that time the great- 
est state trial ever witnessed in the United 
States. It began on March 5 and lasted till 
May 16. Thirty-five Senators were for convic- 
tion and nineteen for acquittal. The change of 
one vote would have carried conviction in a 
body which was so largely Republican and anti- 
Southern. But there was one Republican who 
refused to engage in this method of getting rid 
of a Chief Magistrate who had the courage to 
oppose that "reconstruction" propaganda which 
brought more trouble to the South than the bat- 
tles of the war. 

An English historian, commenting on this 
affair, says: "The very form of the indictment 
betrayed an abuse of the impeaching power. 
The President was accused of high misdemean- 
ors in having disobeyed an act of Congress (of 
whose validity he was fully entitled to form his 
own opinion till it should be ascertained by the 
Supreme Court), and again in having expressed 
in a public speech his view of the constitutional 
status of the present maimed and imperfect 
Congress. To deny the President of the United 
States the privilege of free speech secured by 
the constitution to every citizen was monstrous. 
To call the acts in question * misdemeanors' was 
absurd." 

The South for some years felt bitter toward 



206 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

Johnson, but he at last regained favor in his 
State, and was elected to the United States 
Senate in 1875. His early poverty and strug- 
gles and his persistency in overcoming obsta- 
cles recall the quatrain: 

' ' To toil on in the darkness, and succeed — 
This is, men say, a miracle, and still 
The way is plain in spite of night and need 
When lighted by the lambent light, the Will." 




SAMUEL L. CLEMENS (MARK TWAIN). 



The person who is 
known to more people 
of different conditions 
than any other literary 
man in the world is Sam- 
uel L. Clemens, the hu- 
morist. He was born in 
the little Missouri town, 
Florida; attended vil- 
lage school; lived in a 
frontier community; 
worked as a journeyman printer; fought in the 
Confederate army, and learned the business of pi- 
lot — all before he became convinced that a liter- 
ary life was the calling for which he was the 
best adapted. 

After his short service in the Confederate 
army he went to Nevada and entered upon news- 
paper work. In journalism he did not seem to 
make an impression on the management of the 
papers on which he worked. As in the case of 
Kipling, he met with discouragement by editors 
and employers, who did not appreciate his mer- 
it until he won fame, and then they sought an 

(207) 



208 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

advertisement by announcing that he was once 
in their employ. 

His first pen name, adopted when he began 
his duties on the Virginia City (Nev.) Enter- 
prise, was "Josh." It is said that when he en- 
tered Virginia City he appeared in the garb of 
a miner, and was generally seedy-looking; also 
that in those days he had little capacity for 
making friends. In 1864 he went to San Fran- 
cisco and acted as correspondent for the Neva- 
da paper. In a series of articles he attacked 
the chief of police, and the envenomed com- 
munications created a considerable stir. He 
corresponded for other papers, and did all sorts 
of literary work whereby he could turn a cent. 
He was then employed by the San Francisco Call. 
That paper contained a reference in after years of 
his work as a reporter: "Without doing the gen- 
tleman any injustice," the Call said, "it can be 
safely stated that, although at the time a good 
general writer and correspondent, he made but an 
indifferent reporter. He played at itemizing. 
Considering his experience in the mountains, he 
had an inexplicable aversion to walking, and in 
putting his matter on paper he was, to use his 
own expression, 'slower than the wrath to come.' 
Many funny and characteristic incidents occurred 
during his stay on the Call He only wanted to 
remain long enough, he said, when he engaged 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 209 

to do work, to make 'a stake;' but on leaving, 
his purse was no heavier than when he came." 

He was dismissed from the Call for inefficien- 
cy — a proceeding that paper doubtless after- 
wards regretted. It may be interesting to note 
the fact that many persons who in later years 
became famous have met with such inapprecia- 
tion. James Whitcomb Riley was forced to 
leave an Indiana paper because he wrote a poem 
and through mischief credited it to Poe, the 
waif being widely copied as a hitherto unpub- 
lished lyric by the author of "The Raven." 
He then went on the Indianapolis Journal, and 
made it the most widely known newspaper in 
Indiana by his dialect poems. Richard Harding 
Davis, a young novelist whose name is known 
in Europe and America now, and who has been 
earning a princely salary as a war correspond- 
ent, was unable to please his superior on the 
first paper to which he was attached. "Arte- 
mus Ward," the most famous of American hu- 
morists in his day, could not please the mana- 
ging editor of a journal in Tiffin, Ohio, though 
getting a salary of only four dollars per week. 
Going to England subsequently, scholars, wits, 
poets, and novelists were drawn to him. Charles 
Read became his warm friend. He was a great 
favorite at the literary clubs, and was accorded 
a large salary as a contributor to Puck. 
14 



210 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

Clemens went abroad, and contributed letters 
from the Orient to American papers. These 
articles were then collected and published 
in book form under the title of "Innocents 
Abroad." The volume gave him a world-wide 
reputation at once. This was followed by 
"Roughing It," episodes of newspaper life, 
which added to his fame. 

Then appeared those works which gave to the 
Mississippi River the character and individual- 
ity that history has given such old world rivers 
as the Thames and the Nile — "Old Times on the 
Mississippi," "Tom Sawyer, "and "Huckleberry 
Finn." These he "wrote out of his own heart," 
and they will live because they have a peren- 
nial and universal interest. Of "Huckleberry 
Finn," especially, the luminous and discrimina- 
tive critic, Prof. Brander Matthews, is enthu- 
siastic in his praise. ' ' ' Huckleberry Finn ' con- 
tains the picture of a civilization nowhere else 
adequately recorded in literature," he says. "It 
abounds in adventure and in character, in fun 
and in philosophy. It appears to me to be a 
work of extraordinary merit, and a better book 
of the same kind than 'Gil Bias,' richer in hu- 
mor, and informed by a riper humanity." 

"The Prince and the Pauper" is a beautiful 
idyl, inspired by social problems. His most se- 
rious work is the so-called personal recollections 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 211 

of Joan of Arc, and is full of pathos and heroic 
elevation. 

Should the fashion of humor change — and it 
does change, just as poets and prosists who are 
in vogue to-day may not be in vogue in the future 
— it is properly contended that he will live for 
other qualities. His humor, however, has the 
stamp of universality. 

It is not always recalled that his story, " The 
Gilded Age," was written in conjunction with 
the scholarly Charles Dudley Warner. When 
dramatized and produced in 1874, with John T. 
Raymond in the role of Col. Mulberry Sellers, 
it had an extraordinary success. 

Mark Twain's father was a citizen for many 
years of the Cumberland Mountain district of 
Tennessee, practicing law at the hamlet of 
Jamestown, Fentress County. A few years ago 
a Tennesseean sent him a copy of "Tidd's Prac- 
tice," a book used by his father when at James- 
town. The reply of the humorist was charac- 
teristic. He said he was glad to receive the 
book, since it contained his father's name in a 
handwriting that he recognized; but he wished 
it had been another than a law book, for he un- 
derstood law less than any other man — unless it 
was his brother who was practicing in the West! 

Clemens's pen name, "Mark Twain," was 
suggested by the technical phraseology of Mis- 



212 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

sissippi navigation, where in sounding a depth 
of two fathoms, the leadsman calls out to 
"mark twain!" 

He met with financial reverses a few years 
ago, winning the deep sympathy of all who 
have heard of him; and he and his family went 
to Europe. The rights to one of his latest 
works brought him $50,000, it is announced, 
and he is as courageously and successfully over- 
coming his financial embarrassment as Sir Wal- 
ter Scott, who was led by money troubles to 
write the series of novels which made him fa- 
mous as a novelist as well as a poet. 



ALBERT TAYLOR BLEDSOE 




Macaulay, referring 
to Burk's knowledge of 
India, obtained entirely 
from books, says that in 
every part of those huge 
bales of information 
which repelled almost all 
other readers, his mind, 
at once philosophical and 
p o e ti c a 1, found some- 
thing to instruct and de- 
light. His reason analyzed those vast and shape- 
less masses; his imagination animated and col- 
ored them. All India was present to the eye of 
his mind, from the halls where suitors laid gold 
and perfume at the feet of sovereigns to the 
wild moor where the gypsy camp was pitched; 
from the bazaar, humming like a beehive with 
the crowd of buyers and sellers, to the jungle 
where the lonely courier shakes his bunch of 
iron wings to scare away the hyenas. He had 
just as lively an idea of the insurrection at Ben- 
ares as of Lord George Gordon's riots, and of 
the execution of Nuncomar as of the execution 
of Dr. Dodd. 

(213) 



214 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

This love of research among literary treas- 
ures — this wonderful grasp of information — was 
all characteristic of the subject of this paper; 
and is illustrated in short by the fact that some- 
time in 1864, while in the British Museum, he 
counted more than six hundred books he had 
read thoughtfully enough to remember the pe- 
culiar views of each individual author. 

Dr. Bledsoe is declared by many to have 
been the South's greatest intellectual giant. 
Whether he was all his friends claimed or not, 
he was a wonderful man, conspicuous for his 
natural capacities and his acquirements, and 
hardly less so for his lack of certain elements 
that insure the completest success. Thomas 
Jefferson was a great man, but some of his writ- 
ings show that he bore unmanly prejudices. 
Patrick Henry was a great man, but his sordid 
love of money was repellant. Dr. Bledsoe has 
his limitations, which are not referred to here 
for any other reason than in appreciation of the 
truth that the reputation that is considered par- 
amount is in peril when it is finally discovered 
that it is, like other men's, not supreme. 

The biographical facts of his life are these: 
He was born at Franklin, Ky., November 8, 
1809. When only fifteen years of age he en- 
tered West Point Military Academy, was gradua- 
ted in 1830, served as lieutenant in the army two 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 215 

years, then resigned to study law. At the end 
of a year he abandoned this and became Assist- 
ant Professor of Mathematics at Kenyon Col- 
lege, Ohio. A year later he took out orders in 
the Episcopal Church. In 1 840 he resumed the 
law, practicing in Illinois. From 1848 to 1854 
he was Professor of Mathematics in the Univer- 
sity of Mississippi, where he was called to the 
same chair in the University of Virginia. He 
served awhile in the Confederate army during 
the war between the States, became Assistant 
Secretary of War in President Davis's Cabinet, 
resigned in 1863, and then went to England to 
procure material for a constitutional history of 
the United States, which he never finished. 
He began the publication of the Southern Re- 
view at Baltimore in 1867, uniting with the 
Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in 1871, 
and becoming a preacher, but not a pastor, 
when sixty-two years of age. He died Decem- 
ber 8, 1877. 

In a discriminative article in the Quarterly 
Review for July, 1893, Dr. Wilbur F. Tillett 
gives an insight into his mission. "Whatever 
Dr. Bledsoe thought about at all," declares Dr. 
Tillett, "he thought about deeply, profoundly, 
ardently. His life, thoughts, and energies seem 
to have gone out in three directions: in the line 
of his chosen mathematics, in defense of the 



216 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

South and her institutions, and in maintaining 
the true doctrine of moral free agency." 

His best- known published works are "Lib- 
erty and Slavery," "Is Davis a Traitor?" and 
"Theodicy, or Vindication of the Divine Glory." 
The first, published in 1857, served its purpose 
well, but is not of much interest now, except to 
show the reasoning power of a great thinker; 
for the passions awakened by the subject are 
quiet — details of it seeming to this generation 
concerned, as Scott's favorite quotation ran: 
With things that are long enough ago, 
And with Dickie Macphalion that's slain. 

The second, published in 1866, is said to have 
caused the release of Jefferson Davis, unjustly 
held by the United States authorities on the charge 
of treason. It is a powerfully written book, 
demolishing the charges made against the great 
Confederate leader. The last-mentioned work 
is a vindication of the justice of God in regard 
to the natural and moral evil that exists under 
his government. It is said to be his greatest 
effort, and the one on which his fame will rest. 
As an editor he was at his best. In this po- 
sition his erudition and vigor of expression came 
into display. He seemed informed on all sub- 
jects — -'science, art, politics, and literature. None 
of the greatest editors of his day surpassed him 
as a writer. 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 217 

He was decidedly combative. While he did 
not fear criticism, it fired him to resentment. It 
has been said of the Jesuit that if he was wanted 
at Lima he was on the Atlantic in the next fleet. 
If he was wanted at Bagdad, he was toiling 
through the desert with the next caravan. If 
his ministry was needed in some country where 
his life was more insecure than that of a wolf, 
where it was a crime to harbor him, where the 
heads and quarters of his brethren, fixed in the pub- 
lic places, showed him what to expect, he went 
without remonstrance or hesitation to his doom. 
Such courage was Dr. Bledsoe's. He uttered 
his convictions, though opposed by those out of 
the Church or in it, and when challenged he 
came off victor generally. His vehemence some- 
times went to the extreme, however, so that 
there are critics who said that those who fell be- 
fore him fell by the mighty battle-ax, and not 
the Damascus blade. This made bitter enemies 
often. Dr. Tillett, in the sketch referred to, 
tells this anecdote of him: "About 1876 or 1877 
Dr. Bledsoe was fiercely assailed by Dr. R. L. 
Dabney in the Southern. Presbyterian Review. 
It chanced that soon after this a friend, drop- 
ping into a barber shop at Alexandria, found 
Dr. Bledsoe in the tonsorial chair taking a 
shave. After shaking hands with him the friend 
remarked: 'Well, Doctor, I see Prof. Dabney 



218 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

is after you.' That was enough. He pushed 
the barber out of the way, wobbled out of 
the chair, and took the floor. He was just half 
shaved, one side of his face being yet covered 
with lather. He was in his shirt sleeves, and a 
towel was suspended from his chin. Walking 
the floor and gesticulating violently, he declared 
that he had long waited for the Lord to deliver 
Dabney into his hands, and now at last his 
prayer was answered, and he would make thor- 
ough work with him. The barber looked on 
with amazement, and found it no easy task to 
get his half-shaven customer to resume the chair, 
while the friend enjoyed the embarrassment, and 
thought the scene one of the most ludicrous 
and laughable he had ever seen." It may be 
added that Dr. Bledsoe made thorough work 
with Dr. Dabney. 

Many stories are told of the self-conceit of 
distinguished men . Tennyson, in reading his own 
poems in a social gathering, sometimes paused 
to observe that a certain passage was exqui- 
site. It is related of Gen. Winfield Scott that 
once, when the enemy was making a stubborn 
resistance, he insisted on placing himself so that 
they- could see him well, sincerely believing that 
his august presence would bring dismay to the 
foe. James T. Fields, while traveling in Eu- 
rope, was invited by Thackeray to attend some 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 219 

meeting and hear him make an address. Thack- 
eray got up to speak, said a few words, floun- 
dered, and sat down. He had forgotten his 
piece. He was not the least embarrassed, but, 
turning to Fields, expressed great pity for the 
audience, who had thus been deprived of one of 
the most masterful addresses ever promised 
them! Dr. Bledsoe had some of this conceit. 
lie was learned, but not eloquent as a speaker. 
He was invited on one occasion to make an ad- 
dress at the commencement exercises of an Ala- 
bama college. An expectant crowd greeted 
him, composed of many distinguished men as 
well as the commonalty. He arose and laid 
down a great pile of manuscript, and for two 
hours read therefrom. The audience were worn 
out and disappointed. He seemed to notice it, 
but afterwards remarked to a member of the 
faculty: "I rather think you have overshot 
your audience in your speaker this commence- 
ment." He considered the want of appreciation 
due to the lack of intellect on the part of the 
audience. 

Dr. Bledsoe had few business qualifications 
and realized little from his books. 




HENRY WATTERSON. 

Byron was born in 
the purple of English 
aristocracy, and Whit- 
tier was a poor farmer's 
boy; Shelley was the 
son of a man who prided 
himself on his descent 
from a long line of 
British squires, and Poe 
was the offspring of 
strolling players who 
died in poverty; Swinburne's father was a baro- 
net, and Timrod was the son of a bookbinder — 
and yet their ancestry had little to do, perhaps, 
with these men's success as poets. 

Good birth, however, it has been said, often 
argues good breeding, refinement, and educa- 
tion. Whether it was of advantage or not to 
Henry Watterson, he was born of good parent- 
age. His father, Hon. Harvey M. Watterson, 
was a native of Bedford County, Tenn., and 
was a member of Congress in 1839 and 1843, 
when he declined a reelection. He was also 
sent on a diplomatic mission to Buenos Ayres. 
He won success in journalism, having been 
(220) 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 221 

owner and editor of the Nashville Union, and 
later one of the editors of a well-known Wash- 
ington paper. He was a Douglas Democrat, 
having been an elector for the State at large on 
that ticket before removing from Tennessee. 
For a number of years he practiced law in 
Washington. 

Though Henry was born in the District of 
Columbia, he has always been claimed by Ten- 
nesseeans as a son of the Volunteer State. His 
earlier years were passed near the little town of 
McMinnville, in the mountain section of Tennes- 
see. When the civil war came up, although de- 
fective in eyesight, he cast his fortunes with the 
South, giving up journalism in the capital of 
the nation. He served in the army in various 
capacities, being a staff officer for two years and 
chief of scouts in the army of Gen. Joseph E. 
Johnston later on. He became prominent dur- 
ing hostilities — not so much as a soldier, how- 
ever, as the editor of a paper called The Rebel. 
This paper had a precarious existence, its place 
of publication being anywhere within the lines 
that proved free for a few weeks from the intru- 
sion of the Federal army. 

After the war, the profession of journalism 
proving to his taste, he became connected with 
various papers at various times, convincing the 
public of his ability with the pen. Finally, 



222 GEEAT SOUTHEEISTEES. 

when George D. Prentice, of the Louisville Jour- 
nal, died, he secured an interest in the property 
in 1872, becoming the editor in chief of two 
consolidated papers, the Times and the Journal. 
He has held that position ever since, his paper 
taking the name of the Courier- Journal. 

Prentice was an editor who made his impress 
on the times. He was a fine editorial writer, a 
master of invective, a splendid logician, a poet 
and a wit, and was, moreover, the first to use 
the editorial paragraph with success on the dai- 
ly paper. He had a national reputation, and 
Prentice's paper was copied and his positions 
commented on in all sections of the Union. 
Would the new editor prove worthy of the 
mantle which had fallen on him? Would not 
the wonderful success of his predecessor over- 
shadow him, calling for comparisons that would 
not be to his advantage? In a later day we 
have seen Alfred Austin made the successor, as 
poet laureate, of the greatest poet of the nine- 
teenth century, and realize how the public has 
resented the succession, scarcely giving to the 
new laureate a modicum of the praise he de- 
serves as a minor poet even. 

But it took but a short while to convince the 
people that the pen was mighty in the hands of 
Watterson. The Louisville paper he edited be- 
came one of the most influential of the period, 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 223 

and the editor took rank with such able newspa- 
per men as Charles A. Dana, of the New York 
Sun, and Samuel Bowles, of the Springfield He- 
publican. 

His style was something new. While Pren- 
tice was excellent in the paragraph, Watterson's 
power lay in his column leaders — "column par- 
agraphs," as some of his contemporaries speak 
of them. In these leaders there were at once 
logic, humor, pathos, badinage, ridicule, learn- 
ing, wisdom, irony; they were broadsides which 
never failed to affect — which the Democratic 
party enjoyed and longed for, and which the 
Republicans appreciated while dreading. 

Watterson became prominent at a time when 
political conditions gave point to his wit. One 
of his skits became the property of hundreds of 
Democratic stump speakers a few years ago — the 
story of Abraiu Jasper's dream — and no doubt 
it cost the Republicans many a vote. "Fel- 
lah-freeman," he declared Jasper to have said, 
* "■ you all knows me. I'se Abram Jasper, a Re- 
publican from 'way back. When dey's been 
any work to do, I'se done it. When dey's been 
any votin' to do, I'se voted 'arly an' late. I'm 
bombproof, old line, an J tax paid. An' I has 
seed many changes, too. I has seed the Repub- 
licans up; I has seed the Democrats up; but 
I is yet to see a nigger up. Ter-night I had a 



224 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

dream. I dreams I died and went to heaven. 
When I re'ched de pearly gates, old Salt Peter 
he ups an' says: 'Who's dar?' sez he. 

" 'Abram Jasper,' sez I. 

"'Is you mounted, or is you afoot?' sez he. 

" 'I is afoot,' sez I. 

" 'Well, you can't come in here,' sez he. 
'Nobody 'lowed in here cepts dem as comes 
mounted,' says he. 

" 'Dat's hard on me,' sez I, 'atter comin' all 
dat distance.' But he never sezhothin' mo'; an' 
so I starts back, an' 'bout halfway down de hill 
who does I meet but dat good ol' Horace 
Greeley. 

" ' Whar's you gwine, Mistah Greeley?' sez I. 

'"I's gwine to heaben wid Charles Sumner,' 
sez he. 

""Taint no use,' sez I — "taint no use. I 
dess been up dar, an' nobody's 'lowed to come 
in 'cepts dey comes mounted, an' you's afoot.' 

" 'Is dat so?' sez he. Den he sorter scratch 
his head, an' sez: 'Abram, you is a likely lad. 
'Sposen you git down on all fours, an' Sumner 
an' me'll ride you in, an' dat way we can all 
git in.' 

" 'Genelmens,' sez I, 'do you think you can 
work it?' 

" 'I know we can,' sez boff. 

"So down I gits on all fours, an' Greeley and 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 225 

Sumner gits astraddle. We ambles up de hill 
again, an' prances up to de gate, an' ol' Salt 
Peter he sez: 'Who's dar?' he sez. 

" 'We's Charles Sumner an' Horace Greeley,' 
shouts Mistah Greeley. 

"'Is you boff mounted, or is you afoot?' sez 
Peter. 

" 'We is boif mounted,' sez Mistah Greeley. 

"'All right,* sez Peter, sez he, 'dess hitch 
your horse outside, genelmen, an' come right 
in!'" 

The meaning of this was apparent— that 
antislavery Republicans like Sumner and Gree- 
ley only loved the negro for his vote. 

A reduction of the tariff has long been a de- 
mand made by Watterson, and he has done more 
than any other Democrat since the war to bind his 
party to that doctrine. He sat for Kentucky as 
delegate in four Democratic conventions, and 
presided over the St, Louis convention in 1876. 

Of late years he claims that he aspires no Ion 
ger to be a leader in Democratic councils. He 
traveled extensively in Europe in 1896, presum- 
ably to be free from the worry of polities. He 
has appeared often on the platform in his well- 
known lectures, "Money and Morals" and 
"Abraham Lincoln," and is an orator of great 
power. He has edited a volume entitled 
"Southern Life," containing extracts from the 
15 



226 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

humorous writings of A. B. Longstreet, Bill 
Arp, Prentice, and others. He has also written 
a work on the Spanish and American war, and 
has in preparation a "Life of Lincoln," of 
whose statesmanship he is a great admirer. 

Besides being an orator, Watterson is without 
doubt the greatest secular editor the South has 
produced. He served in Congress one term 
since the war. 



GEORGE W. CABLE. 



/^% 




After the civil war 
there was a renewed in- 
terest manifested in lit- 
erature by the Southern 
people. Quite a number fi^i 
of writers in prose and HHI 
verse sprang into more W 
than local prominence. IB 
Among the best- known ^j 
prosists was John Esten 
Cooke, who had been a 
Confederate soldier under Gen. Lee. He had 
published a number of volumes before 1861, 
but they did not meet with the success of 
"Surrey of Eagle's Nest" and "Mohun ; or, 
The Last Days of Lee and His Paladins." 
These were very popular, and are read yet 
with absorbing interest. They are semihis- 
torical, and in them we get vivid pen pic- 
tures of Stonewall Jackson, the gallant Stu- 
art, the impulsive Ashby, and the boy hero 
Pelham, as well as of Southern phases of life 
that are true and entertaining, if somewhat flor- 
id in coloring. His histories, too, are as fasci- 
nating as his fiction. 

(227) 



228 GEEAT SOUTHEENEES. 

Then there were the popular romances of 
Mrs. Terhune (Marion Harland), that found 
readers in all sections; and the less meritorious 
productions of Mrs. S. A. Dorsey, who willed 
her valuable estate to Hon. Jefferson Davis. 
Histories of great value and some literary merit 
were put before the public, while poetry in a 
minor key, or a little above that, as in the poet- 
ry of Mrs. Preston, showed that interest in let- 
ters had taken a new impetus. 

But Southern literature began to attract the 
national public more particularly after 1870, 
when Richard Malcolm Johnston's, Thomas 
Nelson Page's, and George W. Cable's first laud- 
able efforts appeared in the magazines. About 
this time, too, Augusta Evans began to do her 
most notable work. 

Johnston, born in 1822, did not essay litera- 
ture till late in life. "The Dukesborough 
Tales," published in 1871, won him immediate 
popularity, and this was his most representative 
work, though it was followed by ' ' Georgia 
Sketches" and "Old Mark Langston." The 
North recognized his genius, and always appre- 
ciated what he wrote as much as the South. 

When there appeared in Scribner's Magazine 
the series of short stories on Creole life, by Ca- 
ble, there was no longer any doubt that the 
Southern writers were impressing their work on 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 229 

the public. Their publication was recognized as 
a real literary event. 

Cable was born in New Orleans in 1844, of colo- 
nial Virginia stock on the one side and New En- 
gland on the other. He now resides in the North. 
Some of his writings have given offense to the 
Southern people, and they do not hold him in the 
reverence which it would seem his genius should 
inspire. The Creole population, whom he has 
affectionately depicted, have especially resented 
the liberty he took in bringing them into pub- 
licity. They have an idea that he has given the 
world an impression that the Louisiana Creole is 
of African taint, but this assumption is more 
apparent than real. 

Perhaps "The Grandissimes " is Cable's most 
ambitious work. It is, as the critics contend, 
an important contribution to representative lit- 
erature. In it "he has essayed the history of 
a civilization, and the result is a great book." 
While he was for a while editor of Current Lit- 
erature, he has generally devoted himself to 
writing books. He has given readings from his 
works in England, and in that country received 
every token of appreciation. As Irving wrote 
the first short stories, and Poe the earliest detect- 
ive novels, Cable was among the first Ameri- 
cans to give, in "Old Creole Days," the short 
story its present vogue. 



HOLLAND N. M'TYEIRE. 




Sir Edwin Arnold, 
writing of a great Per- 
sian author of the twelfth 
century, says that it was 
asked of him: "Of whom 
didst thou learn man- 
ners?" 

"From the unmanner- 
ly," the Persian replied. 
"Whatever I saw them 
do which I disapproved 
of, that I abstained from." 

The Grecians had a way of impressing the 
vice and disgust of intemperance on the young 
people by placing the drunkards in the public 
places to be stared at. 

No doubt all this was the part of wisdom, but 
as good a lesson on the advantages of living 
properly may be learned from studying the 
lives of good men. Longfellow truthfully says. 
their careers remind us that we can also make 
our lives sublime. 

And in this connection who presents greater 
claims to our admiration than Dr. McTyeire? 
Said a distinguished divine of him not long 
(230) 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 231 

since: "I have known some of the leading men 
of the nation, but Bishop McTyeire was the 
greatest man I ever saw. Perfectly practical, 
though a genius; not eloquent, I should say, 
but one who threw out to his audience great 
slugs and chunks of wisdom." 

He was a Virginian by birth, and his first ap- 
pointment after reaching his majority was Wil- 
liamsburg, the seat of the College of William 
and Mary. It is said that he never thought 
much of that effort. Perhaps his congregation 
were not enamored of it either; but they did not 
know that the ancient saw would prove appli- 
cable to the tedious young man before them: 

But call not the jungle empty; maybe 
A tiger sleeps there that ye did not see. 

After years proved that a tiger was asleep in 
the jungle. His aim was to do well and profit- 
ably the work he undertook, and consequently 
he was from the beginning his own severest 
critic. As early as 1852, some six years after 
he began to preach, he made this comment on a 
sermon delivered in New Orleans: "Delivered 
it clumsily, with little effect. People shut both 
eyes — to sleep; at least so did a number," 

Overconfidence is the bane of too many of the 
young; and when they believe themselves per- 
fect, not needing the advantages that come of 
hard study and preparedness, failure is the re- 



232 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

suit as a general rule. Watchfulness of Lis 
weak points and implicit confidence in the ax- 
iom that there is no excellence without great 
labor, made this man the power he became in 
the Church. 

His rise was gradual and sure, and from that 
beginning at Williamsburg here is his record: 

He was pastor of various Churches from 1845 
to 1851, when he was elected editor of the New 
Orleans Christian Advocate. 

In 1858 he became editor of the Nashville 
Christian Advocate. 

In 1866 he was elected bishop, and in addi- 
tion to this was made President of the Board of 
Yanderbilt University, by the terms of the gift 
of Cornelius Vanderbilt founding that institu- 
tion. 

Although he became such an important figure 
in the Church, he never sought the more impor- 
tant pastorates. Much of his early preaching 
was to the negroes, and he delighted to preach 
to the common people, from whom he sprang. 
It is recorded that after he had been thirty or 
thirty-five years in the ministry his habit w&& to 
get in his buggy on Sunday mornings and ride 
to a mission church or suburban chapel and, un- 
announced, fill the pulpit, to the happiness and 
benefit of his hearers. 

He was not what we would term a bookworm. 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 233 

though his discourses show the embellishment 
which comes of careful reading. He was a 
close student of select books, and his favorites 
were Lord Bacon, Jonathan Edwards, Jeremy 
Taylor, Archbishop Leighton, Dr. South, Hook- 
er, and Barrow. The characters of the Old 
Testament were to him of more interest than 
other biblical characters, perhaps — such as Abra- 
ham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac, Moses, Joshua, 
Isaiah, Daniel, and David. Into these, says 
one writer, he could breathe the breath of life, 
and make them move through his sermons as 
creatures of flesh and blood. 

Of all the Methodist memorialists, he was no 
doubt one. of the masters; and this was why he 
was called upon to preach the funeral sermons 
of so many distinguished persons. He preached 
the memorial discourses on the deaths of Bish- 
ops Soule, Early, Paine, Kavanaugh, Doggett, 
and Marvin, and of Dr. J. B. McFerrin and 
Commodore Vanderbilt. 

Courage to rebuke frivolity and wickedness in 
high places was one of Dr. McTyeire's character- 
istics. Among the sublime characters of Scrip- 
ture is the Tishbite, who unawed stood before 
Ahab and told him what should befall the land 
for his wickedness; who denounced the king and 
Jezebel for their crime against Naboth. His 
courage lifts him to an altitude. This trait was 



234 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

an admirable one in McTyeire, and an instance 
of it was given when one Sunday morning in 
1856 he preached a scathing sermon to a fash- 
ionable audience in New Orleans. "Hard 
ground to plow," he afterwards commented. 
"Made a few straight furrows and pretty 
deep. Heard afterwards that it was not liked by 
some of the chief estates. Could not say less." 

A distinguished divine, recently withdrawing 
from a certain denomination because an apostle 
of that species of refined infidelity, higher crit- 
icism, was admitted therein, affirmed that other 
ministers would withdraw if it were not for 
fear of starvation coming to their families. 
How needful in such cases the McTyeire cour- 
age which rebuked wrong, no matter the conse- 
quences! 

Dr. John J. Tigert, the scholarly Book Editor 
of the M. E, Church, South, thus refers to the 
Bishop: "Perspicuity was a leading element in 
both his preaching and writing. He was noth- 
ing if not clear. He never indulged in the 
hair-splitting distinctions of metaphysics, or 
attempted before popular audiences the exposi- 
tion of the obscurer Christian doctrines. . . . 
Weightiness of utterance, no l£ss than perspicu- 
ity, was one of the most striking features of his 
preaching. As in the case of Daniel Webster, 
' Every word seemed to weigh a pound. ' Some- 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 



235 



times a single sentence would startle, not like 
the crack of a whip, "but like the discharge of a 
cannon." 

The "History of Methodism" is a monument 
to his research and literary effort. Vanderbilt 
University — which he made possible— is a mon- 
ument to his love of education and the youth of 
the land. 

While Bishop McTyeire can hardly be classed 
with the .orators, there were times, as in the 
case of Dr. J. B. McFerrin, when he was elo- 
quent. His discourse on "I shall be satisfied 
when I awake with thy likeness" is described 
by those who heard it as a prose poem. 



SIDNEY LANIER. 




>^ The star of Sidney La- 

nier's fame rose only as 
the sun of his life was 
sinking. Though he is 
now being recognized as 
he should be in France, 
England, and America, 
and as his genius de- 
served, during the latter 
part of his life, while 
struggling with consump- 
tion, he was forced to earn his bread by lectur- 
ing during the day in the Johns Hopkins Uni- 
versity in Baltimore and playing the flute in the 
Peabody concerts at night. 

What worth is eulogy's blandest breath 

When whispered in ears that are hushed in death? 

Lanier was born in Macon, Ga., in 1842; and 
in 1881 died in the mountains of North Carolina, 
whither he had gone in hope of a short respite 
from the disease with which he had wrestled for 
fifteen years. He served in the Confederate 
army in the war between the North and South. 
Afterwards he }3racticed law in the city of Ma- 
con, but in 1873 moved to Baltimore. There, 
(236) 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 237 

as he found time, he did much of his literary- 
work, thoug previous to his removal he pub- 
lished a novel entitled "Tiger Lilies." This 
work was entertaining, the earlier scenes being 
laid in the Tennessee mountains, when shifting 
with the Army of Virginia. The style is para- 
graphical. "Tiger Lilies" met with as little 
success as Hawthorne's first work. 

His other prose works are several books for 
boys, and -"The Science of English Verse" and 
"The English Novel." After his death his lec- 
tures were published by a Northern firm. They 
show him to be an excellent critic and a master 
of style. 

It is perhaps as a poet that his name will live. 
His place in our literature is secure; but, as has 
been suggested, it is not fixed, for it is becom- 
ing higher the more his poetry is read and stud- 
ied. A distinguished female critic of France, 
Madame Blanc, said in a recent article: "To 
pronounce a eulogy upon poetry is indirectly 
to speak of Sidney Lanier, for, whatever may 
be thought of his work, he was par excellence a 
poet in the superhuman acceptance of that ideal 
term — that is to say, not merely a skillful 
chiseler of rhymes, but an exceptional being, 
penetrated with the worship of the beautiful, 
whose every act was an utterance of the music 
of his soul. . . . Never was a nobler song 



238 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

wafted to heaven than the life of Lanier. It 
showed, a rare example at the present day, the 
combat of an invincible will, sovereign sure of 
itself, against the most terrible obstacles, pov- 
erty, sickness, death, all held in check by a su- 
perior power that yielded not until at God's 
command." 

She considers Lanier the superior of Poe, and 
has evidently imbibed even the slanders relative 
to the latter's personal life. "There are two 
geniuses who hover over the charming city of 
Baltimore," she continues, "slumbering all 
rosy red beneath what is almost a Southern sun: 
the one more celebrated among foreigners than 
in his own country, the other almost absolutely 
unknown in Europe. Their names: Edgar Al- 
lan Poe and Sidney Lanier, the Ahriman and 
the Ormuzd of the place, the demon of perver- 
sity and the angel of light; the former carried 
away by morbid passions that conducted him to 
an ignominious end, the latter faithful to the 
purest ideal in his life as in his work; both 
marked by fate for the victims of a frightful 
poverty; both doomed to die young, at almost 
the same age, after having long suffered from a 
hopeless malady." 

Soiling another does not make one's self clean, 
says Tennyson. Abuse of Poe is not necessary 
to make Lanier's worth apparent. 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 239 

After the failure of "Tiger Lilies," Lanier 
continued " sending his poems to the maga- 
zines and getting them back again — the pro- 
verbial editor on the lookout for budding genius 
proving most chimerical," to quote Mr. Richard 
Burton. "Corn," a representative piece, found 
its way into JLippincott's Magazine, however, 
and soon the Century and the Independent 
opened their doors to him. 

His characteristics as a poet were technical mas- 
tery equal to that of Tennyson, original thought, 
and spiritual fervor. It is true that he was a 
pantheist who felt God in everything. His 
best work, the culmination of his thought and 
spiritual force, is found in the "Hymns of the 
Marshes," and especially in "The Marshes of 
Glynn" and in "Sunrise," which have been 
termed magnificent imaginative organ chants. 
The finest of these was written while the author 
was lying so weak that he could not lift his 
hand to his mouth. 

Among his other most admired poems are 
"My Springs," "Ballad of Trees and the Mas- 
ter," "Life and Song," and "The Crystal." 

Of the minor poets of America Lanier stands 
at the head. Indeed, it will not be a surprise to 
the critical and unbiased mind if the future shall 
rank him with Longfellow, Whittier, Lowell, 
and Poe as the five greatest American poets. 



MARY N. MURFREE. 



About one mile north 
o f Mnrf reesboro, Ten- 
nessee, there is a plain, 
/ unpretentious cottage. 

/ 1 ' <\ It is situated on a small 

r - f -} farm, notable mainly 

! ' ,'. . .'. for its apparent lack of 

\ "... fertility. The sur- 

V / *v$ rounding scenery is not 

V . 'J attractive, the land be- 

^ '-■-■■* ing rolling and the trees 

somewhat scrubby; but in that cottage and on 
that farm resides one of the most admired South- 
ern writers. Miss Mary N. Murfree, whose sto- 
ries of the Tennessee mountains have given 
her the prominent place she holds in American 
literature. 

Miss Murfree was born about the year 1850, 
and comes of one of the oldest and best families 
of the State. Murfreesboro, at one time the 
capital of Tennessee, was named for one of her 
ancestors. While she had written considerable 
from girlhood, her first work did not appear un- 
til she was nearly thirty-five years of age. 
This was called ''Where the Battle Was 
(240) 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS- 241 

Fought," which, though not a success, gave much 
promise of her power as a writer of stories. 
No publisher desired it, it is said, until the 
great favor accorded the sketches "In the Ten- 
nessee Mountains" opened the way. 

Like many another writer, financial embar- 
rassment coming to the family induced her to 
turn seriously to her pen, and the result has 
been to the gain of the public. She adopted 
the pseudonym of "Charles Egbert Craddock," 
and her work was offered to the editors under 
that name. They noticed no indication of femi- 
ninity in her letters or her strongly written 
work, and were much surprised to learn that 
she was a woman. On her first visit to them 
after the sensation created by her stories it is 
related that they would hardly believe that the 
lady introduced as Miss Murfree was " Charles 
Egbert Craddock." As in the case of Sam- 
uel L. Clemens, she is better known now hy her 
pen name than by her real name. 

Miss Murfree might have been a successful 
landscape painter. The fine descriptions of the 
majestic phases of nature are indicative of this. 
There are few finer descriptions than those she has 
given of the mountains she loves so well. They, 
as well as her virile portraiture of the sturdy 
mountaineers, come of a long sojourn among 
such scenes as she has put in her books^ and are 
1G 



242 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

not from second-hand sources. In the Tennes- 
see mountains she found her field, and, like 
Thomas Nelson Page and E,. M. Johnston,, has 
enriched literature no little by this devotion to 
the possibilities of her section. Here is a de- 
scription that stands out like the pictured can- 
vas of a master: 

An early moon was riding, clear and full, over 
this wild spur of the Alleghanies; the stars were few 
and very faint; even the great Scorpio lurked vague- 
ly outlined above the wooded ranges; and the white 
mist that filled the long, deep, narrow valley between 
the parallel lines of mountains shimmered with opal- 
escent gleams. 

This picture is from "The Dancin* Party at 
Harrison's Cove:' r 

The clear luster shone white upon all the dark 
woods and chasms and flashing waters that lay be- 
tween the New Helvetia Springs and the wide, deep 
ravine called Harrison's Cove, where from a rude 
log hut came the vibrations of a violin and the 
quick throb of dancing feet, already mingled with the 
impetuous rush of a mountain stream close by, and 
the weird night sounds of the hills, the cry of birds 
among the tall trees, the stir of the wind, the monot- 
onous chanting of the frogs at the water side, the long, 
drowsy drone of the nocturnal insects, the sudden 
faint blast of a distant hunting horn, and the far bay- 
ing of hounds. 

The following is a faithful photograph of a* 
certain typo of mountain, women* 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 243 

Not mere cheerful was Mrs. Johns. She was 
tall and lank, and with such a face as one never 
sees except in the mountains — elongated, sallow, 
thin, with pathetic, deeply sunken eyes, and high 
cheek bones, and so settled an expression of hopeless 
melancholy that it must be that nothing but care and 
suffering had been her lot; holding out wasted hands 
to the years as they pass — holding them out always, 
and always empty. 

Says a critic in reference to the Tennessee au- 
thoress's charcteristics: 

In Old Sledge ' ' at the settlement, ' ' the picture of 
the group of card players throwing their cards on the 
inverted splint basket by the light of the tallow dips 
and a pitch pine tire, while the moon shines without, 
and the uncanny echoes ring through the rocks and 
woods, is as graphic as one of Spagnoletto's paintings. 
And she has done a gentler and even more sympa- 
thetic service in depicting the lonely, self-reliant, 
half-mournful life of the mountain women whom she 
loves, particularly the young women, pure, sweet, 
naive, innocent of all evil. The older women "hold 
out wasted hands to the years as they pass — holding 
them out always, and always empty; " but in draw- 
ing her old women Miss Murfree brightens her some- 
what somber pictures by their shrewd fun and keen 
knowledge of human nature. Mrs. Purvine is a stroke 
of genius. Nor could Miss Murfree's stories have 
won their wide popularity with an American au- 
dience without a sense of humor, which is to her 
landscape as the sun to the mist. 

The novels which have added most to Miss 



244 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

Murfree's reputation are: "In the Tennessee 
Mountains," "In the Clouds," and "The Prophet 
of the Great Smoky Mountains." "The Story 
of Old Fort Loudon " is her latest contribution 
to fiction, and appeared in 1898, the scene being 
laid in the eastern portion of East Tennessee in 
the eighteenth century. It is a historical novel, 
and is perhaps made less interesting by a too 
faithful adherence to facts. However, some of 
the characterizations — especially of the Cherokee 
chiefs — are strong, and her love of the mountains 
is apparent throughout. 

She and her sister write much, and are valued 
contributors to the leading magazines of Amer- 
ica. Few people are more averse to notoriety 
than she, and her life is therefore spent in com- 
parative seclusion. In a conversation with the 
well-known poet, James Whitcomb Riley, the 
authoress of "The Prophet of the Great Smoky 
Mountains" was mentioned, and he said to the 
writer of this article: "I suppose Tennesseeans, 
as well as all Southerners, are proud of Miss 
Murfree, one of the greatest of American dia- 
lect writers. She is a wonderful woman." A 
compliment as merited as it was unselfishly ex- 
tended. 



JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS. 




It is a little amusing 
to look into a volume of 
Southern writers, pub- 
lished soon after the 
war, and find Joel Chan- 
dler Harris treated main- 
ly as a writer of verse- 
not that he was not pos- 
sessed o f poetical p o s- 
sibilities, but because 
his success has been in 
so different a field; and speaking of him as a poet 
calls for this tender little poem on the old and 
new years by way of illustration: 

Clasp hands with those who are going, 
Kiss the lips that are raised to be kissed; 

For the life of the old year is flowing 
And melting away in the mist. 

A shadow lies black on the water, 

A silence hangs over the hill; 
And the echo comes fainter and shorter 

From the river that runs by the mill. 

Greet the new year with music and laughter; 

Let the old shrink away with a tear! 
But we shall remember hereafter 

The many who die with the year. 

(245) 



246 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

Before the appearance of Harris's "Uncle Re- 
mus," in 1880, the negro was known to litera- 
ture through "Uncle Tom's Cabin," a very 
popular book, and one that had much influence 
in destroying the institution of slavery, but a 
book of little literary merit and less truth where 
the negro was concerned. It was written by a 
resident of the North, but the authoress's por- 
trayal of the negro character was much- like 
an artist endeavoring to paint a portrait of a 
person never seen by him, and never faithfully 
described. "Uncle Remus" is a true type, and 
the world will not controvert the fact. 

Harris was born in Georgia in 1848, and his 
life was passed among the characters he depicts so 
well. Like William D. Howells, one of America's 
representative literary men, he began lfe as a 
typesetter. He then studied and practiced law, 
but finally took up journalism. He was for 
years one of the editors of the great Southern 
daily, the Atlanta Constitution, but recently re- 
signed. 

The writer of this sketch recalls with pleasure 
a visit to the distinguished litterateur in his sanc- 
tum in the Constitution building. Harris was 
then in his fiftieth year — a person of grave cast 
of countenance, but pleasant though shy in 
manners, about five feet ten inches in stature, 
and beginning to show his age. He sat at work 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 247 

with his hat on, and there was little to distin- 
guish him from the ordinary, hard-working, me- 
thodical newspaper man. "Yes," said he, in 
reply to a question, "I have published sixteen 
volumes of — trash." The reply was indicative 
of his modesty; he does not, for all his success, 
assume the role of lion. 

Many stories are told of his shyness. He 
was once in New York looking after his publica- 
tions, and the literary set prepared to give him 
a reception. As soon as he heard of it he took 
the next train for the South. On another occa- 
sion the celebrated dialect poet, James Whit- 
comb Riley, while in Atlanta, expressed a de- 
sire to meet him. A mutual friend informed 
him that he would have to come on Harris un- 
awares; and, acting on this advice, he called on 
the creator of "Uncle Remus" without warn- 
ing, and in that way had the pleasure of meet- 
him. He is as retiring and modest as Haw- 
thorne and Cowper were, though as much of a 
celebrity. 

The position of the negro is an anomalous 
one. He is midway between the whites and 
the animals Uncle Remus knows so much of. 
This is perhaps the reason he has such an affec- 
tion for the lower animals, and this may ac- 
count for the fact that every negro has a num- 
ber of dogs around his house, whether able to 



248 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

feed himself well or not. Harris appreciates 
his position — the negro's philosophy, so pathet- 
ic because born of helplessness; his humor, that 
sustains him despite his hard lot; and so Sis 
Tempey and Tildy and Uncle Remus are drawn 
with such fidelity that they seem flesh and 
blood. 

Harris's position in literature is high and per- 
manent. He is said by some to be the most 
popular of American writers. He is known the 
world over, and his principal books have re- 
ceived translations into a number of languages. 



JAMES LANE ALLEN. 




The superlative i n 
criticism is always dan- 
gerous, but it is perhaps 
not venturing too much 
to say that the best 
American novel yet 
written is Nathaniel 
Hawthorne's " Scarlet 
Letter." 

Of all the novelists 
coming after him, James 
Lane Allen is perhaps the most remindful. 
This is not to mean that Allen is an imitator, 
but there is a grace about his style and a pleas- 
ing sincerity of manner that almost approach 
the characteristics of the New England novelist. 
The Hawthorne of the South would not be an 
inappropriate title. 

He was born on a farm in 1850, near Lexing- 
ton, Ky., a country world-famous for its state- 
ly homes and green pastures. There were spent 
his childhood and youth. His early manhood 
was passed as a school-teacher. While follow- 
ing his vocation he wrote poems and critical es- 
says, but his first important work was a series 

(249) 



250 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

of articles descriptive of the blue grass region, 
published in Harper's Magazine. His ability 
was at once recognized by the public, but the 
public did not know how much he had toiled to 
acquire the style which is so pleasing. His mas- 
tery of English, it is said by those who knew 
his early days, was acquired with great diffi- 
culty, and his knowledge of Latin was gained 
through years of instruction as well as study. 
It has been a mooted question as to whether 
style, that pleasing way of saying things which 
attracts us, is natural or acquired. Those who 
have set themselves up to advise on the subject 
say that the art is acquired only after the greatest 
effort, that practice alone makes perfect. Oth- 
ers, disagreeing, aver that style is often natu- 
ral, just as some people are better talkers, as 
Aaron was better than Moses; and they refer to 
John Buuyan and Washington Irving, who had 
few educational advantages and little training, 
and were yet possessed of "styles" not sur- 
passed by the most cultured and painstaking. 
Lane, however, may prove that a style can be 
secured through great labor, though one has lit- 
tle natural adaptation. 

His first stories, written after he had studied 
the Trappist Monastery and the Convent of Lo- 
retto, as well as the records of the Catholic 
Church in Kentucky, were "The White Cowl" 



GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 251 

and "Sister Dolorosa." They appeared in the 
Century Magazine, and few people can read the 
first and not ever afterwards recall it as one of 
-the most thoroughly interesting stories of the 
day, although hardly equal froni a literary 
standpoint to his later work. 

"A Kentucky Cardinal" and "A Summer in 
Arcady" are justly admired, but the " Choir 
Invisible" is so far his best and most popular 
novel. It might have been improved had the 
author moralized less, or at least introduced his 
moralizing in a briefer and less obtrusive way. 
All Lane's stories have a historical background, 
and in the "Choir Invisible" pioneer Kentucky 
of the eighteenth century exists.- Its publica- 
tion was delayed a few weeks after the date an- 
nounced for it to appear, and fifteen thousand 
copies were sold before it left the bindery. It 
has been one of the popular novels of the past 
five years, and has won its author an enviable 
reputation in the literary world. ■ 

His books deal with moods more than action. 
There is little that is dramatic in any of them; 
their problems are spiritual, not physical. His 
realism has always a poetical aspect, as has 
been said by a critic, and his books tend toward 
"the higher way of life." An admirer de- 
clares regarding the " Choir Invisible" that "not 
since Hawthorne in American prose, and Thack- 



252 GREAT SOUTHERNERS. 

eray in English classics, have words flown so 
straight, yet on so light and effortless a w** 1 *;;" 
and "in reviewing Mr. Allen's work, one char- 
acteristic grows clearer. We have it in the 
unusual blending of realism and poeUy; of a 
sincerity, which is the foe of sentimentalism, 
with a passion for beauty that brings it to the 
service of ideal ends." 

Some one has suggested that the best ^ _ vels 
of a majority of the writers in England and 
America have brought fame before their authors 
reached their thirtieth year. Exceptions are 
found in at least two Southern writers, Miss 
Murfree and James Lane Allen. 



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